THE  GREEK  AND  LATIN  INSCRIPTIONS 

ON  THE 

OBELISK -CRAB 

IN  THE 

METROPOLITAN  MUSEUM,  NEW  YORK 
21  iflonograpf) 


BY  AUGUSTUS   C.  MERRIAM,  PH.D. 

ADJUNCT  PROFESSOR  OF  GREEK  IN  COLUMBIA  COLLEGE 


^k?.-  :•-•"{  ••• 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  GREEK  AND  LATIN  INSCRIPTIONS 


ON  THE 


OBELISK -CRAB 


IN  THE 


METROPOLITAN  MUSEUM,  NEW  YORK 


JHonogropI) 


UNIVERSITY  .of  CALIFORNIA 

kf 

LOS  ANGELES 
LIBRARY 

>  AUGUSTUS   C./MERRIAM, 

ADJUNCT  PROFESSOR  OF  GREEK  IN  COLUMBIA  COLLEGE 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  FRANKLIN  SQUARE 

1883 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1883,  by 

HARPER    &    BROTHERS, 
In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington. 


A II  rights  reserved. 


TA25 
C68 


PREFACE. 


OF  the  two  obelisks  at  Alexandria,  Egypt,  which  for  so  long  divided 
the  interest  of  tourists  with  Pompey's  Pillar,  one  lay  prostrate  upon 
the  ground,  the  other,  though  erect,  was  hidden  for  some  feet  above 
its  base-stone  by  the  accumulation  of  debris  about  it.  When  Mr. 
Dixon  was  preparing,  in  1877,  to  remove  the  fallen  monolith  to  Eng- 
land, he  excavated  about  the  base  of  the  other  in  order  to  ascertain 
what  kind  of  a  pedestal  had  originally  supported  the  obelisk.  In 
doing  so  he  discovered  that  it  had  rested  upon  four  bronze  sea-crabs, 
two  of  which  alone  remained  in  place,  the  other  pair  having  been 
wrenched  out  and  carried  off,  apparently  by  plunderers.  One  of 
those  still  in  position  had  lost  both  claws  and  all  the  legs,  only  the 
stumps  of  these  remaining.  The  other  had  been  mutilated  very 
similarly,  but  the  right  claw  in  part  was  still  left,  and  upon  this  had 
been  engraved  a  Greek  and  a  Latin  inscription.  These  crabs  were 
removed  by  Commander  Gorringe  with  the  obelisk  to  this  city  in 
1880,  and  were  presented  by  him  to  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of 
Art  in  Central  Park  in  June,  1881.  The  Annual  Report  of  the 
Museum,  made  public  on  the  I2th  of  February,  1883,  contained  the 
following  paragraph :  "  In  the  last  Report  we  acknowledged  the  gift 
of  two  bronze  crabs,  found  at  Alexandria,  as  supports  to  the  obelisk 
now  in  Central  Park,  on  one  of  which  were  inscriptions.  Restrictions 
imposed  by  the  donor  against  copying  or  publishing  the  inscriptions 
for  a  certain  time  having  been  recently  removed,  they  have  been 
copied,  and  impressions,  photographs,  and  sketches  made  for  the 
study  of  scholars.  These  fail  to  confirm  the  accuracy  of  the  read- 
ings which  have  been  published." 

1 8332O 


yj  PREFACE. 

One  of  the  sketches  here  mentioned  was  sent  to  Dr.  F.  A.  P. 
Barnard,  President  of  Columbia  College,  and  led  to  an  investigation, 
the  results  of  which  are  contained  in  this  publication.  The  form 
which  the  last  originally  assumed,  of  a"  record  of  advance  in  discov- 
ery, has  been  retained  for  many  reasons.  All  investigation  must  be 
made  with  some  groping,  not  with  full  knowledge.  The  introduc- 
tion thus  given  behind  the  scenes,  as  it  were,  may  dispel  some  of  the 
illusion  of  stage  scenery,  but  may  also  wrin  credit  where  doubt  will 
be  eager  to  fasten. 

My  thanks  are  due  to  President  Barnard,  for  his  interest  in  the 
matter,  to  Professor  H.  Drisler,  for  many  suggestions  as  to  the  con- 
sultation of  authorities,  to  Professors  J.W.  White  of  Harvard  and  M. 
Warren  of  Johns  Hopkins,  for  the  loan  of  books,  and  to  R.  S.  Poole 
and  W.  Henzen,  for  information  duly  acknowledged  below. 

AUGUSTUS  C.  MERRIAM. 

DEPARTMENT  OF  GREEK,  COLUMBIA  COLLEGE, 
N.  Y.,  June  5,  1883. 


COLUMBIA  COLLEGE, 
DEPARTMENT  OF  GREEK, 
May  9/tf,  1883. 

President  F.  A.  P.  BARNARD  : 

Dear  Sir, — Your  attention  having  been  called  some  time  in 
January  last  to  certain  discrepancies  existing  between  the  inscriptions 
on  the  bronze  crab  found  under  our  obelisk  at  Alexandria  and  the 
versions  published  here,1  Professor  Drisler  requested  me  to  investi- 
gate the  matter,  which  I  accordingly  did,  and  now  have  the  honor  to 
submit  the  following  report. 

As  a  preliminary,  it  became  necessary  to  consult  Commander 
Gorringe's  "  Egyptian  Obelisks,"  where  I  found  the  inscriptions 
given  in  this  form : 

L.   H   KAISAPOS  ANN° 

BAPBAPO.  ANEOHKE 
APXITEKTON  OYNTOS  AEGypTI 

ARCHITECTANTE  PONTIO 

On  the  27th  of  January  I  visited  the  Museum,  and  spent 
some  time  in  making  a  transcript  from  the  bronze  of  all  that 
could  be  easily  deciphered.  The  condition  then  presented  by  the 
inscriptions  as  far  as  I  observed  will  be  seen  in  the  accompany- 
ing fac-similes  (a)  (a),  with  the  three  exceptions  which  will  be  noted 
below. 

The  portion  of  the  claw  of  the  crab  now  remaining,  upon  which 
the  inscriptions  are  engraved,  is  eight  and  three  quarters  inches  in 

1  So  far  as  I  know,  these  inscriptions  were  first  published  here  by  G.  L.  Feuardent,  from 
a  paper  read  before  the  American  Numismatic  and  Archaeological  Society  of  New  York, 
on  the  I5th  of  January,  1881,  and  printed  during  the  same  year.  This  paper  is  embodied 
in  the  main  in  Commander  Gorringe's  "  Obelisks,"  the  form  of  the  inscriptions  being  the 
same  in  both.  At  the  commencement  of  this  investigation  I  was  not  aware  that  they  had 
ever  been  published  abroad.  Vague  rumors  to  the  effect  that  they  had  appeared  in  some 
foreign  journal  I  was  unable  to  verify  until  my  own  inquiries  were  completed.  See  pp.  34. 


THE  OBELISK-CRAB  INSCRIPTIONS 


length,  and  seven  and  three  quarters  in  width.  The  Greek  on  the 
outside  occupies  a  space  of  about  eight  inches  in  length  by  three 
and  one  half  in  width ;  the  Latin,  within,  five  and  three  quarters  by 
three  inches ;  both  being  cut  upon  a  convex  surface.  The  Greek,  as 
a  whole,  is  in  a  fine  state  of  preservation.  The  letters  are  deeply  and 
accurately  cut,  in  the  main,  and  their  exact  size  may  be  seen  on  the 
fac-simile.  Between  the  L  and  H  rises  a  knob  of  the  crab  about 
an  inch  in  diameter  at  the  base,  and  a  similar  one  stands  between  the 
H  and  K  following.  The  S  at  the  end  of  the  first  line  was  smaller 
than  the  other  letters,  and  represented  by  irregular  lines,  slightly  but 
plainly  cut.  s  of  BAPBAPOS  was  clearly  outlined,  but  filled  entirely 
to  the  surface  with  oxidation.'  E  at  the  end  of  the  second  line  is 
engraved  partly  on  the  curve  where  the  bronze  begins  to  round  at 
the  extremity  between  the  two  nippers,  which  were  about  one  and 
one  half  inch  apart  here.  In  the  next  line  the  final  2  is  cut  entirely 
on  the  end,  and  but  roughly  at  that ;  hence  it  does  not  appear  in 
a  squeeze  at  all. 

The  Latin  is  inscribed  on  the  inside  of  the  claw,  opposite  to  the 
Greek,  but  between  the  shoulder  and  the  curved  and  projecting 
nippers,  which  are  now  gone.  In  studying  the  form  of  the  letters  it 
is  necessary  to  take  this  into  consideration ;  and  also  the  fact  that 
the  other  claw,  now  gone,  stretched  out  within  twenty  inches  of  it  at 
the  base  or  shoulder,  and,  to  judge  from  the  restorations  now  under 
the  obelisk,  within  about  thirteen  inches  at  the  extremity  of  the  nip- 
pers. This  confined  position  gave  the  workman  less  freedom  in  the 
employment  of  his  tools,  and  the  letters  are  smaller,  less  deeply  cut, 
irregular  in  shape,  and  poorly  executed ;  while  the  lines  do  not  run 
straight  across  like  those  of  the  Greek,  but  slant  considerably  upward 
from  left  to  right.  The  surface  of  the  bronze  on  this  side  has 
suffered  severe  injuries  from  deep  cuts  and  scratches,  as  well  as  from 
pounding  or  other  violence.  Some  of  these  cuts,  though  not  wide 
enough  themselves  to  destroy  the  letters  completely,  have  actually 
produced  this  effect  by  the  fact  that  the  upturned  furrows  have  been 
driven  down  over  the  adjacent  surface.  AESARIS  is  plainly  cut,  and 
the  C  before  it  clearly  outlined  by  a  color  mark,  but  the  surface 
1  For  convenience  of  space  this  is  drawn  in  the  fac-simile,  as  it  now  appears. 


-JD 


od 

^ 


S3  < 

> — J    iZ? 


o 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  g 

to  the  left  of  this  is  badly  marred.  In  the  next  line  was  a  curious 
combination  of  letters  and  marks,  some  of  the  latter  impossible  to 
catch  at  all  except  in  certain  lights.  Towards  the  end,  RAEF  was 
plain  enough,  and  before  it  the  top  of  a  P  distinctly  engraved,  though 
the  remainder  is  completely  destroyed  by  a  deep  triangular  gouge. 
Enough  remains  of  the  P  to  render  it  a  certain  letter.  The  A  at  the 
beginning  of  the  last  line  was  difficult  to  make  out,  so  that  I  did 
not  draw  it ;  but  it  is  now  added  in  the  fac-simile. 

It  was  easy  to  see  at  a  glance  that  the  inscriptions  presented  con- 
siderable difficulties,  and  the  discrepancies  between  them  and  the 
published  readings  were  such  as  to  render  necessary  a  complete 
reconsideration  of  the  subject,  historically  and  epigraph ically. 

We  will  begin,  then,  with  the  Greek,  since  the  reading  there  is 
more  certain,  in  consequence  of  the  surface  having  suffered  less  injury. 

At  the  first  blush,  a  character  with  the  form  of  a  Latin  L  in  a 
Greek  inscription  with  no  archaic  characteristics,  strikes  one  as 
something  anomalous ;  and  so  it  would  be  in  general  in  an  inscription 
from  Greece  proper ;  but  we  are  well  aware  that  this  is  from  Egypt, 
where  the  L  is  known  to  occur  frequently.  Our  great  storehouse  of 
Greek  inscriptions  is  Boeckh's  "Corpus  Inscriptionum  Graecarum" 
(cited  below  as  the  "  Corpus  "  or  as  "  C.  I."),  in  four  volumes  folio,  the 
third  volume  of  which  was  published  in  1853  under  the  editorship  of 
J.  Franz.  This  contains  such  inscriptions  as  had  been  discovered  in 
Egypt  up  to  that  time,  gathered  from  the  works  of  various  travellers, 
but  based  mainly  upon  Letronne's  "  Recueil  des  Inscrip.  Grecq.  et 
Lat.  de  1'Egypte  "  (1842-8).  The  collection  of  Franz  amounts  to  some 
three  hundred  in  number,  to  which  may  be  added  about  one  hundred 
and  fifty  more  from  the  adjacent  region  of  Ethiopia.  A  very  large 
part  of  these  are  dated  in  the  year  of  the  Ptolemaic  king  or  Roman 
emperor  during  whose  reign  the  inscription  was  made,  and  the  great 
majority  of  such  have  the  word  for  year  indicated  by  this  character 
L.  The  date  itself  commonly  follows  the  L,  expressed  in  the  usual 
Greek  manner  by  the  letters  of  the  Greek  alphabet.  Rarely  the 
letters  precede  the  L.  That  this  character  represents  the  word  for 
year  there  is  now  no  possibility  of  doubt,  but  its  precise  origin,  and 
the  exact  word  in  Greek  for  which  it  stands,  are  points  about  which 


10 


THE  OBELISK-CRAB   INSCRIPTIONS 


there  has  been  considerable  dispute  ever  since  the  revival  of  learning. 
It  seems  to  have  attracted  attention  first  upon  coins,  where  it  occurs 
frequently  among  those  struck  by  the  Ptolemies  and  the  Roman  em- 
perors, and  it  was  conjectured  to  be  the  initial  of  the  Greek  AYKABAS, 
an  archaic  and  poetic  word  for  year.  Such  is  the  explanation  of  H. 
Goltz  in  his  work  on  coins  published  in  1574.  J.  J.  Scaliger,  however, 
in  1583  and  again  in  1609  tried  to  prove  that  it  represented  the  Latin 
Liistrum,  a  space  of  five  years,  meeting  the  objection  that  this  would 
make  the  reigns  of  the  emperors  too  long,  by  asserting  that  the  coins 
on  which  such  dates  were  found  did  not  give  the  year  of  the  emperor, 
but  that  of  the  imposition  of  tribute  upon  the  particular  city  in  ques- 
tion, and  he  indulges  in  some  ridicule  of  those  learned  men  who  per- 
sist in  opposing  his  theory.  But  this  supposition  could  not  maintain 
itself  long,  as  the  collections  of  coins  increased  so  that  wider  and 
more  accurate  surveys  of  the  field  could  be  made.  And  yet,  Casaubon 
is  said  by  Placentius  to  have  acceded  to  it  at  one  time;  at  another, 
according  to  Noris,  he  thought  it  a  mark  used  to  separate  words  or 
letters  from  one  another.  But  this  was  refuted  by  the  fact  that  it 
often  occurs  where  no  word  or  letter  precedes.  In  spite  of  various 
other  opinions  AYKABAS  held  its  ground,  Hardouin  in  1685  stating 
that  the  L  was  the  Latin  letter,  but  in  1689  recalling  this  opinion,  on 
the  ground  that  it  was  found  on  the  coins  of  the  Ptolemies  anterior 
to  any  Roman  influence  through  which  the  Latin  L  could  have  been 
borrowed,  and  explaining,  that  L  was  not  only  a  Latin  but  also  an 
archaic  Greek  character  (as  is  well  known  now,  of  course),  and  that  it 
had  been  purposely  chosen  instead  of  the  common  A  as  the  initial 
representative  of  AYKABAS  in  order  to  avoid  confusion.  Was  the 
year  32,  for  instance,  to  be  written,  it  might  be  expressed  by  LAB,  in- 
stead of  AAB.  Vaillant,  in  1692,  explains  simply  as  AYKABAS,  but 
Noris  in  1729  suggests  that  it  stands  rather  for  ETOS,  the  ordinary 
Greek  word  for  year.  His  main  argument  for  this  is  drawn  from  an 
old  manuscript  in  the  library  of  the  Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany,  former- 
ly belonging  to  Angelus  Politianus,  and  containing  various  tracts  on 
astronomy.  The  next  page  to  the  last  of  this  manuscript  contained 
some  signs  under  a  Greek  title  meaning,  "  Explanation  of  Signs 
Used ;"  and  among  the  signs  this:  LL,  ETH.  Hence,  as  several  of  the 


OF  CENTRAL   PARK,  NEW  YORK.  j  j 

signs  there  found  are  not  Latin,  and  as  astronomy  was  especially  an 
Egyptian  science,  he  concludes  that  the  Egyptians  designated  the 
year  by  the  mark  L,  and  from  there  its  use  extended  into  Syria :  and 
that  this  character  is  a  mere  conventional  sign,  and  not  a  letter  at  all. 
But  still,  AYKABAS  maintained  its  supremacy,  as  with  Placentius, 
1757,  and  Rasche,  1785;  while  Eckhel  in  1797  regards  it  as  tri- 
umphantly proved  by  "the  recent  discovery"  of  AYKABANTOS 
AEKATOY  on  an  Alexandrian  coin  of  Vespasian.  He  is  followed  by 
Champollion  in  1819,  and  Letronne  in  his  "  Recueil,"  1848,  vol.  ii. 
p.  129;  but  on  page  450  he  deserts  AYKABAS  altogether;  for  he  has 
now  met  with  two  inscriptions1  which  read,  TO  IA  L  KAI  IE  L,  and 
AIIO  TOY  *  L  EIS  TO  IH,  respectively,  where  the  neuter  article  shows 
that  the  neuter  word  ETO2,  and  not  the  masculine  AYKABAS,  was 
present  to  the  mind  of  the  writer.  From  this  he  arrives  at  the  same 
conclusion  as  Noris,  that  L  is  a  conventional  sign  for  ETOS,  as  h  for 
the  drachma,  and  C  for  the  obol.  The  period  of  neither  of  these  in- 
scriptions can  be  fixed  with  certainty,  which  may  be  said  also  of  C.  I. 
No.  4S62b,  which  exhibits  a  similar  use  of  the  article.  But  Peyron, 
in  his  "  Papiri  Greci  del  Mus.  Brit."  (1841),  gives  the  transcripts  of 
several  Greek  papyri  of  about  164  B.C.,  in  the  reign  of  Ptolemy  Philo- 
metor.  In  the  third  of  these,  the  article  occurs  once  in  the  same  form 
of  expression  as  above,  in  the  sixth  six  times,2  in  the  ninth  once,  in 
the  tenth  twice.  The  second  papyrus  is  given,  in  part,  C.  I.  iii.  p.  301. 
It  consists  of  a  petition  addressed  to  the  king  by  Ptolemy,  the  son  of 
Glaucias,  a  Macedonian,  who  begs,  as  a  reward  for  having  lived  as  a 
religious  recluse  for  fifteen  years  at  the  temple  of  Serapis  in  Memphis,3 
that  his  younger  brother  may  receive  an  appointment  as  officer  in  the 
army.  He  writes  the  "fifteen  years"  in  the  form  trrj  <f.  His  brother 
gives  the  petition  to  the  king,  who  countersigns  it  and  refers  the 
matter  to  the  scribes  in  the  proper  department.  There  an  official 
digest  of  the  petition  is  made  by  the  scribes,  in  which  the  mi  <f  of 
Ptolemy  is  written  L  <t.4  All  this  tends  to  prove  that  at  that 
early  period  ETOS  and  not  AYKABAS  was  understood  to  be  repre- 

1  C.  I.  No.  4684d,  and  47i6dss. 

8  ro  »/i  L,  £te  TO  £  L.     No  accents  or  breathings  are  found  in  these  papyri. 

3  OVfifiavrof  ce.  ytyovtvai  fie  ev  KaTo\r]i  tv  rtai  Trpog  /ie^(pfi  /isyaXwt  ffapaTTieioii  eri]  t£. 

4  typafyu  ttvai  iv  KUTO\I]  ei>  TW  irpos  fj.efi<pfi  /icyaXwt  aapairmotiii  L  if. 


I2  THE  OBELISK-CRAB  INSCRIPTIONS 

sented  by  L.  Franz  had  already  reached  this  conclusion  in  1840' 
and  afterwards  regarded  the  arguments  of  Letronne  as  convincing 
proof;  *  and  Gardthausen3  gives  "  L,  ETOYS,  ETH,"  among  a  number  of 
"  conventional  hieroglyphic  "  signs,  and  refers  to  Letronne's  earlier 
interpretation  (AYKABAS)  as  a  false  one.  Furthermore,  against  the 
single  coin  of  Vespasian  containing  AYKABANTOS,  great  numbers 
can  be  cited  of  various  ages  with  ETOS  or  some  abbreviation  of  this 
word ;  and  of  all  the  seventeen  inscriptions  given  by  Boeckh  in  which 
AYKABAS  is  employed  for  "  year,"  though  gathered  from  diverse  parts 
of  the  Greek  world,  every  single  one  is  poetic. 

If  we  may  rely  at  this  day  upon  the  labors  of  Rasche,  Eckhel, 
Mionnet,  etc.,  we  may  conclude  that  this  L  appears  first  on  the  coins 
of  Ptolemy  I.,  and  to  him  the  honor  would  be  due  of  having  intro- 
duced into  numismatics  so  convenient  a  character,  after  he  had  be- 
stowed upon  Egypt  the  great  boon  of  a  uniform  system  of  coinage, 
and,  becoming  actual  king  of  the  country,  he  began  to  date  his 
years  from  the  death  of  Alexander.  From  Egypt  its  use  would  be 
extended  to  Cyprus,  Syria,  Cyrene,  a,nd  all  that  region  of  the 
Levant  over  which  the  Ptolemies  held  sway.  From  coins  it 
passed  into  ordinary  use  in  writing  and  inscriptions,  but  was 
mainly  confined  throughout  its  history  to  Egypt  and  its  adjacent 
regions.4 

So  far  then,  L  H  of  our  inscription  reads  according  to  the  full 
Greek  expression,  ETOYS  OFAOOY, "  in  the  eighth  year ;  "  for  in  these 

1  Element.  Epigr.  Grace,  p.  375. 

•C.  I.  iii.  p.  1 1 86. 

3  Griechische  Palaeog.  1879. 

*  In  answer  to  a  letter  of  inquiry  respecting  the  earliest  appearance  of  this  character  on 
coins,  Mr.  Reginald  Stuart  Poole,  of  the  British  Museum,  has  since  written  me  as  follows  : 
"  The  earliest  occurrence  I  know  of  in  coins  of  the  symbol  L  is  on  those  of  Ptolemy 
Philopator,  dated  in  his  third  year,  and  issued  in  Cyprus  (Catalogue  Ptol.,  Intr.,  p.  1., 
Tables,  p.  62).  The  date  is  B.C  220-219.  The  symbol,  I  think,  is  derived  from  the  demo- 
tic form  of  the  Egyptian  (hieroglyphic)  symbol  for  the  year  Y,  which  is  ")•*  V  m  hieratic, 
and  ~\  1  in  demotic.  I  admit  that  the  demotic  form  seems  too  remote  for  the  L.tmt  the 
demotic  could  always  typically  recall  its  hieratic  prototype."  Mr.  Poole  has  just  been 
engaged  in  issuing  the  Catalogue  of  Ptolemaic  Coins  to  which  he  alludes,  and  his  identifi- 
cations are  based  on  a  more  exact  and  comprehensive  study  than  that  of  his  predecessors, 
while  his  acquaintance  with  Egyptology  renders  his  derivation  of  the  symbol  especially 
interesting  and  valuable. 


OF   CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  j -, 

dates  the  Greek  letters  represent  the  ordinal  and  not  the  cardinal 
numbers,  a  fact  sometimes  more  clearly  indicated,  as  in  the  coin  of 
Vespasian  cited  above,  as  well  as  in  other  ways. 

Next  we  pass  on  to  KAI2AP  2.  That  this  is  meant  for  KAI2AP02, 
"  of  Caesar,"  is  beyond  question,  both  from  the  analogy  of  other  in- 
scriptions, arid  from  the  position  of  the  final  2,  which  leaves  room  for 
a  small  o,  which  was  very  commonly  employed  in  such  expressions,  and 
might  possibly  be  revealed  here  by  removal  of  the  incrustation  on  the 
surface.  There  certainly  was  not  room  for  both  O  and  2  to  be  cut, 
of  the  same  size  as  the  other  letters  of  the  word;  and  if  the  o  was 
omitted  altogether,  it  is  not  without  numerous  precedents,  as  C.  I. 
4715  (an  inscription  in  honor  of  Augustus),  where  we  read  without 
variant  AYTOKPATOP02,  but  Wescher  corrects  to  AYTOKPATOP2,  as 
actually  found. 

KAI2AP02,  then,  "of  Caesar;"  but  of  what  Caesar  in  the  long 
line  from  Julius  down  ?  Since  neither  inscription  answers  the  ques- 
tion directly,  the  solution  must  be  obtained  by  a  comparison  of  other 
inscriptions  and  the  habitual  methods  there  employed  in  such  desig- 
nations, together  with  such  facts  of  history  as  may  be  brought  to 
bear  upon  the  matter  in  hand.  Julius  Caesar  is  excluded  by  the  fact 
that  his  connection  with  Egypt  extended  only  from  48  to  44  B.  c.,  a 
period  too  short  for  an  eighth  year.  But  ancient  authorities  tell  us 
that  Augustus  conquered  Egypt  B.C.  30,  that  the  line  of  Ptolemaic 
rulers  became  extinct  in  effect  upon  the  death  of  Cleopatra  shortly 
after  Augustus  entered  Alexandria,  and  that  the  country  was  reduced 
to  the  form  of  a  Roman  province  under  a  Roman  governor,  called 
pr&fectus  during  all  the  earlier  period,  but  prcefectus  Augustalis  or 
simply  Augustalis,  later  on.  Upon  examining  the  inscriptions  from 
this  region  in  the  "  Corpus,"  it  is  found  that  all  those  which,  by  the 
length  of  the  reign  indicated,1  as  well  as  for  epigraphic  reasons  and 
other  circumstances,  must  be  assigned  to  Augustus,  have  Caesar  alone, 
without  any  further  designation  of  his  name:  while  the  other  emperors 
have  each  his  proper  name  or  names  in  addition  to  that  of  Caesar. 
This  has  led  Letronne,  Franz,  and  other  authorities  to  assign  to 

1  Nos.  4715,  4909, 49295,  49290,  in  the  3151  year,  5086  in  the  320!,  4863  in  the  35th,  4922 
in  the  38th,  4;i6d'  in  the  43d. 


j^  THE   OBELISK-CRAB  INSCRIPTIONS 

Augustus  all  inscriptions  where  Caesar  alone  occurs,  unless  some 
very  strong  reason  opposes.  Twice  only  throughout  the  Egyptian 
section  of  the  "  Corpus  "  has  this  emperor  any  distinctive  name  but 
Caesar,  and  that  on  the  Kilometer  where  he  is  called  AYFOYSTOS 
KAI2AP  (not  2EBA2TO2).  A  good  example  of  the  difference  in  this 
respect  between  him  and  his  successors  is  to  be  found  m  C.  I.  47i6d' 
and  47i6da.  In  the  former,  a  person  named  Agathapous  pays  his 
adoration  to  Pan  in  the  forty-third  year  of  Caesar  (L  Mr  KAI2APO2); 
and  in  the  second,  the  same  individual  in  the  same  place  three  or  four 
years  after  offers  his  vows  in  the  fifth  year  of  Tiberius  Caesar  (ETOYS 
E  TIBEPIOY  KAI2APO2).  From  such  evidence  it  is  safe  to  conclude 
that  the  crab  inscription  refers  to  Augustus  Caesar. 

Accordingly,  the  next  point  to  determine  is  the  year  from  which  his 
reign  began  to  be  reckoned.  There  was  the  Actian  Era,  dating  from 
31  B.C.,  and  the  Augustan  Era,  dating  from  27  B.C.,  when  Octavianus 
received  the  title  of  Augustus.  But,  in  fact,  that  it  is  neither  of  these 
which  was  regularly  employed  in  Egypt  becomes  plain  from  the 
following  evidence  : 

Alexandria  was  captured  August  ist,  B.C.  30,  and  as  soon  as  the 
news  reached  Rome  the  Senate,  Dio  Cassius  tells  us,  decreed  that 
"  the  day  on  which  Alexandria  was  taken  should  be  a  holiday, 
and  the  computation  of  their  years  should  be  made  from  that  day."1 
When  Censorinus  says  (De  Die  Natal.  21)  that  the  Egyptians  began 
their  era  two  years  earlier  than  the  Romans  did  their  Augustan  Era, 
because  Egypt  was  reduced  two  years  before  Octavianus  was  styled 
Augustus,  he  is  not  very  wide  of  the  mark  ;  in  reality,  it  was  two 
years  and  some  months,  and  the  decree  of  the  Senate  was  not  carried 
into  effect  in  precise  terms  ;  for  it  was  arranged  that  the  year 
should  begin  on  the  2Qth  of  August,  the  Egyptian  New  -Year's  day, 
as  Ideler  showed  conclusively  by  his  exhaustive  treatment  of  the 
subject  in  his  "  Historische  Untersuchungen,"  1806,  where  he  verified 
the  statements  of  the  Ptolemaic  Canon  by  various  astronomical  cal- 
culations. He  conjectures  with  probability  that  Cleopatra's  death 
did  not  actually  occur  till  about  the  29th  of  August.  Philo  Judaeus, 

1  li.  19:  rf]V  Tt  t'mipav  tv  y  /)  'A\(KavFptia  «a\o>,  aya3rf)i>  re  iivai  nal  is  ra  'nrnra  irr]  ap\nv  TnS 


avrStv 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  j  r 

Clemens  Alexandrinus,  and  Ptolemy,  all  natives  of  Alexandria,  say 
that  Augustus  ruled  over  Egypt  forty-three  years,  which  would  be 
exactly  the  case,  within  a  few  hours  at  least,  according  to  one  of  their 
systems  in  which  the  New-Year's  day  was  allowed  to  fall  one  day  ear- 
lier every  four  years,  instead  of  intercalating  a  day  for  leap-year.  If 
further  proof  were  necessary,  it  is  furnished  by  the  inscription  men- 
tioned above  as  erected  by  Agathapous  in  the  forty-third  year  of  Au- 
gustus, in  the  month  Phamenoth,  corresponding  to  our  February  or 
March.  Reckoning  from  August  29th,  B.C.  30,  the  forty-third  year 
is  A.D.  14,  and  Augustus  died  on  the  igth  of  August,  A.D.  14.  Aga- 
thapous builded  better  than  he  knew. 

Hence,  when  an  Egyptian  date  in  the  reign  of  Augustus  is  given 
without  the  month,  as  on  the  crab,  it  is  impossible  to  determine  to 
which  of  two  years  of  our  era  it  belongs,  since  the  first  third  of  the 
Egyptian  year  fell  into  one,  and  the  remainder  into  the  other.  Con- 
sequently, the  "eighth  year"  must  be  indicated  by  23-22  B.C. 

Another  point  must  here  be  mentioned.  In  the  large  majority 
of  instances  throughout  the  inscriptions  the  date  is  placed  at  the 
end  instead  of  the  beginning,  as  on  the  crab ;  but  the  following  may 
be  cited  where  it  stands  at  the  beginning:  C.  I.  4701,  4737,  4863, 
4963,  4980,  4984,  4989,  4994,  4996,  5004,  5010. 

The  next  question  for  consideration  is  whether  Barbarus  was  the 
prefect.  Of  this  the  Greek  says  nothing;  the  Latin  evidently  had 
some  name  before  the  word  PRAEF,  but  it  seemed  to  demand  con- 
siderable boldness,  not  to  say  rashness,  to  make  BARBARVS  out  of 
the  inarticulate  combination  of  letters  and  marks  presented  by  the 
bronze,  unless  some  substantial  proof  could  be  presented  that 
BARBARVS  ought  to  be  there.  Hence,  we  must  turn  to  history  and 
see  if  Barbarus  could  have  been  prefect  in  23-22.  All  authorities 
agree  that  the  first  prefect  appointed  over  Egypt  by  Augustus  was 
Cornelius  Gallus,  the  friend  and  patron  of  Virgil ;  that  his  term  of 
office  lasted  till  26  B.C.,1  when  he  became  intoxicated  by  the  almost  un- 
limited power  in  his  hands,  began  to  set  up  statues  of  himself,  inscribe 
his  exploits  upon  the  pyramids,  and  play  the  king  indeed ;  that  he 
was  thereupon  recalled  by  Augustus,  and  soon  put  an  end  to  his  life 

1  Dio  Cassius,  liii.  23. 


j5  THE  OBELISK-CRAB  INSCRIPTIONS 

by  his  own  hand.  In  relation  to  his  successor,  authorities  are  no 
longer  at  one,  some  asserting  that  he  was  ^lius  Gallus,  others 
Petronius.  A  careless  expression  of  Die's  lies  at  the  root  of  the 
trouble ;  but  the  question  is  hardly  worth  discussing  here,  since  the 
evidence  is  overwhelming  that  Petronius  was  prefect  in  24,  when 
yElius  Gallus  led  the  expedition  into  Arabia  Felix,  some  of  the 
flutter  of  which  at  Rome  we  see  even  in  the  lines  of  Horace1  and 
Virgil.5  Josephus  tells  us3  that  a  great  famine  fell  upon  the  Jews 
in  the  thirteenth  year  of  Herod,  and  continued  with  such  severity 
that  in  the  following  season,  when  it  was  ascertained  that  the  grain 
which  had  been  sowed  the  previous  year  had  perished  in  the  ground, 
Herod  melted  down  his  plate,  and  sent  the  proceeds  for  corn  to  his 
friend  Petronius,  who  held  the  prefecture  of  Egypt  under  appoint- 
ment from  Augustus  ;4  and  again,5  that  the  battle  of  Actium,  B.C.  31, 
occurred  in  the  seventh  year  of  Herod.  Hence  Petronius  was  prefect 
in  24,  and  the  language  of  Josephus  intimates  that  he  was  prefect 
still  earlier,6  as  he  probably  had  been  ever  since  the  deposition  of 
Cornelius  Gallus.  This  follows  also  from  the  language  of  Strabo,7 
and  surely  no  writer  had  a  better  knowledge  of  that  region  and  time 
than  this  geographer.  He  lived  for  some  time  in  Alexandria,  was  a 
particular  friend  of  .^Elius  Gallus,  and  made  his  tour  through  Egypt 
in  company  with  him  when  ^Elius  was  prefect,  as  he  distinctly  states.8 
Augustus  returned  from  Spain  to  Rome  in  24,  probably  in  January  ;9 
and  in  the  early  part  of  this  year,  or  even  earlier,10  the  Capitol  was 
astir  with  thoughts  of  the  Arabian  expedition ;  and,  as  Josephus  says,11 
it  was  "  about  the  time  "  when  Petronius  sent  the  corn  to  Herod,  that 
the  latter  dispatched  five  hundred  auxiliaries  to  join  this  expedition, 
which  was  to  have  sailed,  as  it  would  seem,  towards  the  last  of  July 

1  C.  i.  29.  "  Aen.  vii.  605.  3  Antiq.  Jud.  xv.  9,  1-2. 

*  firffiire  5'  lir  Ar/virrov  TO.  xpif^ara,  Tlerpujviov  rf]v  tTrap\iav  diro  Kaccrapoc  £i'A»j0oroc. 

8  Antiq.  Jud.  xv.  5,  2. 

'  XV.  9>  2  :  OVTOQ  OVK  oXt'ywv  ITT  avrov  KaTCKjxvyovTiov  Sid  TUQ  aii-uQ  xpci'ae,  iciy,  Tt  <j>i\o£  wj> 
'Hpw^p,  rai  Eictff(uaa<r9ai  9t\uv  roi'e  vir  avrif,  Trpiaroig  fiiv  t£<i>icev  i£ayftv  rov  enrol/,  tig  liiravra 
ci  Kara  ri]V  wvijv  KUI  rbv  tKirXovv  avvr)pyT)ffE.v,  wf  fitya  fiipoQ  7)  TO  irav  ytviaQai  Tavrrjg  rijc  fioqQtiaQ. 

I  Strabo,  118,  819,  and  throughout  his  Geography.  8  Strabo,  118. 

9  Dio,  liii.  28.  10  Hor.  i.  35  ;  Dio,  liii.  22. 

II  XV.  9,  3:  irtpi  £t  TOV  \povov  iicilvov,  ical  <n>[ifi.axiKuv  f?r£/ii//€  Kaiffapi 
TUV  ff<t>naTotf>v\dKO}V,  ovg  TaXXof  AiX(oc  Trepi  rr\v  'EpvSrpav  SaXacrerav  i/ysv. 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  jy 

from  the  head  of  the  Red  Sea.  But  here  it  was  found  '  that  the  ships 
built  for  the  expedition  were  unsuited  by  their  size  and  draught  for 
the  shallows  they  would  have  to  encounter,  and  new  vessels  had  to  be 
constructed,  which  caused  a  delay  till  the  spring  of  23.  Arriving  at 
Leuce-Come  in  Arabia,  the  force  \vas  kept  there  all  that  summer  and 
winter  by  sickness,2  and  it  was  not  till  the  close  of  22,  at  least  nine 
months  after  starting  out  in  the  spring,  that  they  returned,  a  scanty 
remnant,  ingloriously  to  Alexandria.3  In  the  meantime,4  as  Strabo 
proceeds  to  relate,6  the  Ethiopians,  taking  advantage  of  the  dimin- 
ished forces  in  Egypt,  drawn  off  by  Gallus  in  his  expedition,  descended 
the  Nile  and  plundered  the  towns  about  the  first  cataract.  The  pre- 
fect Petronius  marched  with  less  than  ten  thousand  foot  and  eight 
hundred  horse  against  them,  drove  them  back,  and  pursued  them  to 
Pselchis  ;  thence  he  advanced  to  Premnis,  and  even  captured  and  de- 
stroyed Napata,  the  capital  of  Queen  Candace.  Then  he  returned  to 
Alexandria  with  his  booty  and  prisoners,  one  thousand  of  whom  he 
sent  to  Augustus,  "  lately  "6  returned  from  the  Cantabri  (Spain).  The 
Ethiopians  were  not  content  with  their  first  defeat,  but  again  attacked 
the  Roman  outpost  at  Premnis.7  Petronius  marched  a  second  time 
to  meet  them,  and  succeeded  in  throwing  his  forces  into  Premnis 
before  the  enemy  had  captured  it.  They  were  glad  to  send  him  an 
embassy,  which  he  would  not  answer  in  person,  but  despatched  to 
the  emperor,  whom  they  found  in  Samos  on  his  way  to  Syria.  He 
had  remained  at  Rome  till  the  fall  of  22;  then  he  had  set  out  for 
Sicily  while,  as  Dio  says,8  the  events  just  narrated  were  taking  place 
in  Egypt.  He  spent  the  winter  of  22-21  in  Sicily,  and  had  thence 
visited  Sparta  and  other  Greek  towns,  arriving  in  Samos  in  the 
winter  of  21-20." 

Here,  then,  we  have  Petronius  traced  as  prefect  of  Egypt  at 
least  from  25  to  20  B.C.  Consequently,  Barbarus  could  not  have  been 
prefect  in  23-22  by  any  possibility.  It  is  supposed  by  many  that 
Gallus  succeeded  Petronius  about  the  year  20  ;  but  how  long 


1  Strabo,  780.  *  Strabo,  781.  3  Strabo,  782. 

*  I.  e.,  in  the  year  22,  according  to  Dio,  liv.  5.  '  Strabo,  820,  821. 

'  vewerri,  a  very  indefinite  word,  which  will  not  admit  of  any  exact  limitation. 
7  Strabo,  821.  8  liv.  6.  '  Dio,  liv.  7  ;  Josephus,  Antiq.  Jud.  xv.  10,  3. 


jg  THE  OBELISK-CRAB  INSCRIPTIONS 

he  held  the  post,  or  who  were  his  successors  till  the  time  of  /Emilius 
Rectus,  A.D.  14,  our  ancient  authorities  do  not  tell  us,  except  so  far 
as  to  mention  the  names  of  Aquila  and  Maximus,  who  are  supposed 
to  fall  somewhere  within  this  interval.  It  was  left  to  inscriptions  to 
supply  all  the  additional  information  we  have,  and  those  in  the 
"  Corpus  "  give  us  only  Turranius  in  B.C.  7,  and  Octavius  A.D.  i. 

When  I  had  arrived  at  this  point  in  the  investigation,  and  found 
that  my  own  conclusions,  based  upon  these  ancient  authors,  were 
supported  by  Letronne,  Franz,  and  Merivale,  I  was  greatly  puzzled 
by  the  inscription.  Archaeology  must  go  hand  in  hand  with  history; 
at  least  she  must  not,  in  a  moment  of  frenzy,  dash  her  brains  out 
against  a  solid  wall  of  established  facts.  Where,  then,  was  the  key 
to  all  these  contradictions  and  inconsistencies?  I  visited  the  Museum 
for  a  second  time  February  6th,  and  tried  to  extract  something  from 
the  Latin.  Advance  was  made  only  so  far  as  to  note  some  marks 
before  CAESARIS  with  a  straight  line  over  them,  that  might  indicate 
a  number  in  Roman  characters ;  and  I  reached  the  gratifying  result 
that  the  letter  before  the  second  A  in  the  line  below  might  be  s,  G,  R, 
or  B,  its  predecessor  looking  more  like  X  than  anything  else !  Fur- 
thermore, that  a  Greek  letter,  ¥,  was  to  be  seen  in  the  upper  left-hand 
corner  of  the  Latin  inscription,  standing  alone  by  itself,  and  cut  at  a 
somewhat  different  angle  from  the  letters  of  the  Latin. 

February  Qth  I  made  a  third  visit  late  in  the  afternoon  in  com- 
pany with  Dr.  E.  D.  Perry.  When  we  arrived,  Mr.  W.  C.  Prime  had 
just  left  the  Museum,  after  making,  a  careful  examination  of  the 
inscriptions,  and  General  Cesnola  directed  our  attention  to  what 
Mr.  Prime  now  thought  were  traces  of  something  resembling  |  in  the 
Greek  before  the  H  of  the  date.  Both  Dr.  Perry  and  myself  declared 
at  once  that  this  was  an  indisputable  fact,  as  we  traced  the  outlines 
down,  and  I  remembered  then  to  have  noticed  these  tracings  on  my 
second  visit,  but  my  attention  being  called  away  at  the  moment,  they 
had  gone  quite  out  of  my  memory.  This  vertical  mark  lay  directly 
at  the  base  and  close  under  the  projecting  knob  of  the  crab,  so  that 
it  was  partly  shaded  by  it,  and  not  easily  discerned  except  from  a 
proper  position,  since  the  cut  was  filled  quite  to  the  surface  with 
oxidation.  I  immediately  hailed  the  discovery  as  the  probable 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  jg 

solution  of  the  main  difficulties  of  the  problem.  The  key  had  fallen 
quite  unexpectedly  into  our  hands ;  for  the  character  was  a  Greek 
iota,  which,  prefixed  to  the  H,  altered  the  date  ten  years,  and  brought 
it  down  to  B.C.  13-12,  which  I  knew  to  be  somewhere  near  the  date 
of  an  inscription  from  Phikc,  published  by  Wescher,  and  containing 
the  name  of  P.  Rubrius  Barbarus,  as  mentioned  in  a  note  by  Mr.  G.  L. 
Feuardent  in  Commander  Gorringe's  "  Obelisks."  Accordingly,  the 
next  thing  was  to  find  this  inscription  and  ascertain  its  exact  form 
and  purport.  But  first  I  obtained  a  promise  from  General  Cesnola 
that  he  would  have  the  oxidation  removed  next  day  from  the  iota, 
since  it  was  so  important  that  there  should  be  no  possible  doubt 
about  the  existence  and  form  of  this  letter.  I  had  said  to  him  while 
examining  the  inscriptions  for  the  first  time,  that  it  was  impossible 
to  read  them  with  any  approach  to  scientific  exactness,  without  the 
removal  of  the  oxidation  and  other  accumulation  which  filled  and 
obscured  so  many  of  the  lines.  Upon  his  assurance  that  this  could 
be  done  without  injury  to  the  bronze  (as,  indeed,  the  result  proved),  I 
now  urged  it  still  more  strongly,  and  went  early  next  morning  to 
Mr.  Prime,  who  is  a  trustee  of  the  Museum,  to  obtain  his  consent  to 
the  cleaning  process,  which  he  kindly  gave  me.1  I  then  called  upon 
Mr.  Feuardent  to  obtain  such  information  as  he  could  give  me 
towards  finding  the  Wescher  inscription,  and  told  him  of  the  discov- 
ery of  the  iota  and  the  proposed  removal  of  the  oxidation  that  day. 
Hastening  to  the  Astor  Library,  I  entered  upon  a  long  hunt  for  the 
article,  in  which  I  was  obligingly  assisted  by  the  librarians,  but  with- 
out success,  in  consequence  of  the  unfamiliar  form  of  the  citation ; 
and  the  search  was  on  the  point  of  being  abandoned  for  the  time 
when,  upon  the  reference  being  laid  before  the  Superintendent,  he  at 
once  recognized  the  work  and  handed  me  the  volume,  "  Bullettino 
dell'  Institute  di  Corrispondenza  Archeologica,"  1866.  Here  was 
the  article  in  question,  pp.  44-56,  and  the  inscription  ran  thus : 

AYTOKPATOPIKAISAPISEBASTOISQTHPIKAIEYEPrETHL.IH 
EIlinonAIOYPOBPIOYBAPBAPOY 

1  That  all  scruples  were  needless  may  be  seen  by  consulting  foot-note,  p.  39.  It  was 
supposed,  at  this  time,  however,  that  the  condition  of  the  bronze  was  the  same  as  when 
originally  unearthed. 


2O  THE  OBELISK-CRAB  INSCRIPTIONS 

"  To  the  Emperor  Caesar,  the  August,  the  Saviour  and  Benefactor, 
in  the  i8th  year.  Under  the  auspices  of  Publius  Rubrius  Barbarus."1 
This  inscription  was  discovered  by  Wescher  while  attached  to  the 
mission  of  M.  de  Rouge,  1863-64,  on  a  visit  to  Philae  in  company  with 
Mariette-Bey.  It  was  found  on  an  architrave  of  gray  granite  close 
to  the  ruins  of  a  structure  of  the  Roman  period  of  the  Doric  order. 
The  architrave  was  three  and  a  half  metres  long  by  half  a  metre 
high ;  the  letters  large  and  well  formed,  measuring  on  an  average 
sixty-five  millimetres  in  height. 

Here,  then,  is  the  full  name  of  our  Barbarus,  and  not  only  is  the 
date  precisely  the  same  as  that  of  the  crab,  but  the  two  inscriptions 
also  harmonize  epigraphically  in  the  form  of  the  crucial  A  and  2. 
Two  considerable  works,  then,  were  executed  in  the  same  year — the 
erection  of  the  obelisks  at  Alexandria,  and  the  construction  and  dedi- 
cation of  this  building  (probably  a  temple)  at  Philae  to  the  emperor. 
In  the  first  instance,  Barbarus  declares  that  he  performed  the  task 
himself  (of  course  through  his  architect) ;  in  the  other,  it  was  done 
"  under  his  auspices."  The  prefect  had  his  seat  of  government  in 
Alexandria,  and  only  occasionally  made  a  tour  through  the  province. 
Philae,  the  holy  isle,  where  statues  had  been  erected  to  the  emperor 
as  early  as  the  time  of  Petronius,"  was  at  the  other  extremity  of 
Egypt,  on  the  very  confines  of  Ethiopia,  nearly  seven  hundred  miles 
up  the  Nile.  I  say  "our  Barbarus,"  and  include  him  among  the 
prefects;  for  I  had  now  no  hesitation  in  asserting  him  to  be  the 
prefect  of  Egypt  in  B.C.  13-12,  a  date  removed  from  all  historical  ob- 
jections. Wescher  (and  of  course  Mariette,  who  was  with  him),  F. 
Feuardent  ("  Numismatique  de  1'Egypte  Ancienne  "),  and  Boutkowski 
("  Dictionnaire  Numismatique,"  1881)  were  satisfied  to  denominate 
him  prefect  on  the  authority  of  the  Philae  inscription  alone;  we 
now  have  still  more  convincing  proof.  The  argument  is  this : 

In  administering  the  affairs  of  Egypt  as  a  province  the  Romans 
divided  the  country  into  three  great  districts,  the  Thebais  on  the 
south,  the  Heptanomis  in  the  central  part,  and  the  Delta,  or  lower 

1  In  Greek  inscriptions  before  our  era,  O  is  the  regular  representative  of  the  Latin  U 
in  proper  names,  and  Poplius  is  in  fact  the  elder  Latin  form  for  Publius. 
3  Strabo,  820. 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  2I 

Egypt,  on  the  north.  In  addition  to  these,  the  earlier  division  into 
subdistricts  or  Nomes,  of  which  Strabo  tells  us  there  were  thirty-six 
at  this  time,  was  allowed  to  remain.  The  prefect  was  supreme  ruler 
over  the  entire  province.  Over  each  of  the  three  great  divisions  pre- 
sided an  officer  called  Epistrategus,  who  was  habitually  a  Roman, 
chosen  from  the  train  of  the  prefect;  but  over  each  Nome  was  a 
native  Greek  called  Strategus.  From  the  inscriptions  we  perceive 
that  when  a  dedication  was  inscribed  it  was  usual  to  add  the  name 
of  one  or  more  of  these  magistrates,  often  of  all  three,  the  Prefect,  the 
Epistrategus  of  the  district  where  the  dedication  was  made,  and  the 
Strategus  of  the  Nome.  As  for  instance,  in  C.  I.  4715,  by  which  alone 
we  are  informed  that  Publius  Octavius  was  prefect  A.D.  i,  we  read 
that  "  The  people  of  the  city  Tentyris  and  of  the  Nome  dedicate  to 
Isis  and  the  associate  gods  the  propylon  of  the  temple  in  behalf  of 
the  Emperor  Caesar,  the  son  of  the  god,  Zeus  the  Liberator,  the  Au- 
gust, under  Publius  Octavius,  Prefect,  and  Marcus  Clodius  Postumus, 
Epistrategus,  Tryphon,  Strategus."1  As  here,  the  names  and  titles 
are  generally  given,  preceded  by  the  preposition  Em,  with  the  mean- 
ing, "  in  the  time  of,"  "  under  the  auspices  of."  Now,  our  Philae  in- 
scription fails  directly  to  style  Barbarus  prefect,  in  the  same  manner 
as  the  Greek  of  the  crab,  nor  is  any  other  title  given  him.  But  if  he 
had  been  Strategus  of  the  Nome  at  Philae,  his  name  would  not  have 
been  a  Latin  one.  Likewise,  he  would  not  have  been  Epistrategus 
of  the  Thebais,  and  had  anything  to  do  with  the  monument  at  Alex- 
andria in  the  same  year.  Consequently,  the  two  inscriptions,  coming 
from  the  opposite  confines'  of  the  province,  and  engraved  upon  such 
important  memorials  in  the  same  year,  must  refer  to  the  officer  whose 
power  extended  over  the  entire  country,  namely,  the  prefect  and  the 
prefect  only. 

On  the  evening  of  the  same  loth  of  February,  while  examining  a 
very  carefully  prepared  lead  impression  of  the  Latin  of  the  crab,  I  no- 
ticed, while  tracing  back  the  marks  to  the  left  of  CAESARIS,  that  there 
was  a  short  one  which  did  not  run  vertically  like  the  rest,  but  diverged 

1  '  IVep  AvroKpdropos  Kaicrapog,  $tov  v'tov,  Atoc  'EXtvSipiov,  2e/3a<m>i},  i irl  IIoTrXioi/  'OKTaviov  »} 
VOQ   teal  Mapjcoi)  KAaiCt'ou  Uooro/ioi;  tTriffrparijyov,  Tpi^wvof  ffrparrjyovvroc;,  oi  airb  rfj£ 
Kai  TOV  vo^tov  TO  TrjooTri'Xov  "Iffici  v££  fttyiff-y  KUI  roT?  avvvdoi<;  Sreoig  trovQ  Xa  Haicrapof, 


22  THE   OBELISK-CRAB   INSCRIPTIONS. 

at  a  distinct  angle  to  the  others  until  it  came  to  a  deep  cut  and  was  lost. 
This,  I  thought,  might  be  the  right  limb  of  a  V,  and  so  traced  that  letter 
out  on  paper  in  the  same  angular  proportion.  Then  passing  on  over 
the  surface  ruined  by  cuts,  a  faintly  outlined  O  revealed  itself,  and 
adjacent  to  this  a  very  plain  upright  cut  which  traced  out  into  an  N. 
Next,  after  a  space,  came  a  fair  A  with  some  marks  of  N  between. 
Adding  these  to  my  paper,  I  found  that  the  space  between  O  and  the 
supposed  V  would  just  contain  an  X  of  the  same  proportions  as  the 
adjacent  letters.  As  all  the  other  \vords  in  the  several  lines  are 
written  without  spaces  between  to  divide  them,  I  inserted  the  X  and 
read  ANNOXVIIICAESARIS,  for  the  first  line  of  the  Latin,  which  then 
corresponded  exactly  to  the  first  line  of  the  Greek,  date  and  all.1 
Hence  the  inference  was  irresistible  that,  as  both  the  Greek  and  Latin 
harmonized  at  the  close,  and  probably  harmonized  at  the  beginning, 
and  Barbarus  must  have  been  prefect  in  that  year,  BARBARVS  was  the 
name  which  originally  stood  before  PRAEF,  whatever  was  to  be  found 
there  now. 

Here  we  have  arrived  at  a  point  \vhere  some  additional  testimony 
may  properly  be  brought  to  bear.  Pliny  (xxxvi.  14),  writing  not  later 
than  78  A.D.,  states  that  the  pair  of  obelisks,  of  which  ours  is  one, 
were  standing  before  the  Caesareum  in  his  time.  Now,  no  Caesars 
reigned  eighteen  years  up  to  78  A.D.,  except  Augustus  and  Tiberius; 
hence  the  erection  by  Barbarus  must  be  limited  to  these  two  reigns 
at  most.  But  the  prefects  of  the  reign  of  Tiberius  are  all  known  and 
their  years  accounted  for  (C.  I.  iii.  p.  310).  Therefore  the  prefecture 
of  Barbarus  must  fall  into  the  period  between  B.C.  20  and  A.D.  14,  in 
the  reign  of  Augustus. 

On  Monday  the  I2th  I  visited  the  Museum  again,  and  found  that 
the  removal  of  the  oxidation  from  the  iota  had  disclosed  the  original 

1  These  additions,  as  well  as  those  afterwards  obtained  by  the  cleaning  process,  in  both 
Greek  and  Latin,  are  indicated  in  the  fac-similes  (b)  (b).  The  X  of  this  date  is  almost  en- 
tirely ruined  by  the  injury  above,  but  some  slight  indications  of  the  lower  limb  on  the  left 
I  have  ventured  to  mark.  I  am  glad  to  add  to  my  own  observation  the  testimony  of 
Professor  Isaac  H.  Hall,  who  was  an  early  disbeliever  in  the  correctness  of  the  inscrip- 
tions as  published.  Upon  a  recent  visit  to  the  city  he  made  a  careful  examination  of  the 
bronze,  and  writes  me  under  date  of  May  7th,  "  Before  CAESARIS  the  first  line  has  un- 
mistakable traces  of  ANNO  XVIII." 


OF  CENTRAL   PARK,  NEW   YORK.  2-, 

letter  as  deeply,  clearly,  and  regularly  cut  as  any  in  the  line,  and  I 
was  able  to  verify  from  the  bronze  all  that  I  had  recently  discovered 
in  the  Latin  date.  I  took  also  a  very  careful  transcript  of  everything 
I  could  make  out  along  the  line  where  BARBARVS  ought  to  stand, 
preparatory  to  the  continuance  of  the  cleaning  process,  at  which  I  had 
arranged  to  be  present  on  the"  following  day  while  the  repairer  of  the 
Museum  was  engaged  in  the  work.  This  arrangement  was  carried 
out  on  the  i3th,  and  after  some  time  devoted  to  clearing  out  the  2 
and  the  following  A  of  KAISAP,  and  the  2  of  BAPBAPO2  in  the  Greek, 
we  turned  our  attention  to  the  desperate  \S  at  the  beginning  of  the 
second  line  of  the  Latin.  Here,  slowly  and  gradually,  as  the  cuts 
were  traced  out  and  cleared  of  the  oxidation,  a  well-formed  B  disclosed 
itself,  the  upper  part  having  been  so  completely  closed  that  not  a 
single  trace  had  appeared  before  the  process  began.  The  curved  ap- 
pendage to  the  right  still  remained,  but  the  original  B  is  distinct 
enough,  although  the  oxidation  was  not  wholly  removed  from  the 
upper  curve.  Preceding  the  B  a  cut  \vas  found,  but  it  did  not  seem 
to  form  itself  into  any  kind  of  a  letter ;  it  resembles  rather  the  external 
mark  beyond  POSVIT.  A  few  moments  devoted  to  the  space  on  the 
left  of  the  second  A  revealed  the  lower  half  of  a  B  pretty  clearly.  At 
this  stage  the  process  was  suspended  till  a  later  day. 

On  the  afternoon  of  the  i7th,  you  will  remember,  Sir,  that  you  met 
me  at  the  Museum,  in  order  that  ocular  evidence  might  be  added  to 
your  previous  examination  of  the  drawings  and  squeezes,  and  we  went 
carefully  over  the  whole  ground  of  both  inscriptions. 

On  the  22d  the  process  of  cleaning  was  again  resumed  in  my  pres- 
ence, beginning  with  the  now  less  dubious  BARBARVS  of  the  Latin. 
Little  appeared  at  the  time  to  be  gained  from  the  letter  after  the  first 
A,  and  it  was  not  till  I  had  brought  under  the  microscope  a  lead  squeeze 
taken  after  we  had  finished  for  the  day,  that  I  observed  that  one  of 
the  marks  in  the  upper  limb  to  the  right,  which  I  supposed  to  be 
straight,  has  actually  a  very  definite  curve,  as  would  be  proper  for  an 
R.  This  can  now  be  seen  on  the  bronze  with  the  naked  eye,  and 
renders  the  R  certain,  though  the  major  part  of  the  letter  has  nearly 
disappeared,  and  the  whole  surface  in  this  vicinity  is  considerably 
marred.  The  next  letter  became  somewhat  more  plainly  a  B,  with  an 


2.  THE   OBELISK-CRAB   INSCRIPTIONS 

extraneous  cut  running  obliquely  quite  across  it.  The  lower  part  of 
this  had  been  visible  before,  and  gave  rise  to  the  supposition  that  the 
letter  was  more  likely  to  be  R  than  B.  Passing  over  the  adjacent  A, 
which  is  plain  enough,  we  took  up  the  stumbling-block  F,  with  the 
mark  to  the  right  which  at  first  sight  appears  to  run  up  as  far  as  the 
left  limb  of  the  V  and  form  therewith  an  irregular  N.  Close  inspec- 
tion of  the  bronze,  however,  and  of  a  squeeze  under  the  microscope, 
shows  that  it  does  not  connect  with  the  V,  and,  in  fact,  that  there  is  a 
break  between  the  deep  cut  at  the  bottom  and  the  slighter  incision 
higher  up.  Removal  of  the  incrustation  rendered  more  apparent  a 
depression  running  from  this  deep  cut  at  the  right  \vith  something  of 
a  curve  up  to  the  middle  mark  of  the  F,  with  some  slight  indications 
of  its  continuance  round  again  to  the  right  towards  the  top  of  the 
letter;  but  there  the  furrow  from  the  extraneous  gouge  above  has 
been  pressed  down  over  the  surface  quite  to  the  top  of  the  F,  and 
forms  a  high  ridge,  extending  from  the  perpendicular  cut  through  to 
the  V,  but  leaves  the  perpendicular  uncovered,  so  that  this  is  seen 
originally  to  have  continued  somewhat  higher,  till  it  reached  a  point 
parallel  with  the  apex  of  the  adjacent  A,  which  the  F  does  not  do. 
This  leads  me  to  believe  that  the  top  of  the  original  R  is  covered  up 
by  the  overlapping  furrow,  as  is  the  case  with  the  extremity  of  the 
right  limb  of  the  V  and  the  top  of  the  S ;  and  that  the  upper  limb  of 
the  F  is  a  more  recent  attempt  of  some  one,  at  an  unknown  period, 
possibly  to  restore  what  he  mistook  from  the  faintness  of  the  original, 
or  purposely  to  mislead.  Other  evidences  of  tampering  with  this 
word  are  plain,  so  that  it  offers  a  fertile  field  for  a  plentiful  crop  of 
conjectures.  The  second  A  exhibits  several  random  cuts  on  the 
right  limb ;  and  it  seems  to  me  likely  that  the  appendages  of  the  first 
B  and  A  and  the  F  must  be  laid  at  the  door  of  the  ancient  attempt  to 
mislead.  However  this  may  be,  the  cross  to  the  left  of  AEGYPTI,  which 
is  slightly  but  plainly  cut,  is  evidence  of  later  treatment,  at  all  events.1 

1  The  Greek  cross  within  the  H  of  the  Greek  date,  if  a  genuine  cut,  is  something  simi- 
lar, but  this  seems  rather  a  series  of  fortuitous  breaks  in  the  surface-crust,  which  is  here 
quite  thick,  and  it  is  plainly  no  more  than  a  mere  scratch  in  the  bronze  at  the  best. 
Still,  it  is  not  unnatural  that  some  zealous  Christian  should  have  utilized  the  bronze 
for  engraving  this  symbol,  after  the  heathen  gods  had  been  ejected  from  the  temple, 
especially  as  IH  were  the  first  letters  of  IHZOV2. 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  2e 

The  supposition  that  the  prefect's  name  here  was  purposely  de- 
stroyed or  erased  by  some  successor,  or  by  the  order  of  the  emperor 
(cases  of  which  are  not  rare),  is  disproved  by  the  fact  that  the  name 
was  allowed  to  remain  quite  uninjured  on  the  more  conspicuous  side 
of  the  claw  and  in  the  far  more  conspicuous  letters  of  the  Greek.  It 
may  be  urged  that  the  incision,  which  seems  to  me  to  be  connected 
with  the  F  to  form  the  original  R,  is  out  of  proportion  for  that  letter ; 
but  an  examination  of  the  other  R's  of  the  inscription  will  prove  that 
this  wide  extension  at  the  bottom  is  a  peculiarity  of  all  of  them.  But 
about  this  letter  in  particular  there  is  much  room  for  difference  of 
opinion,  though  it  is  plain  that  BARBARVS  must  be  read  here. 

Passing  to  the  line  above,  the  Greek  ¥  was  cleared  out  in  part, 
and  something,  though  not  much,  was  done  to  the  date  to  the  right. 
Here,  whatever  had  not  been  destroyed  by  the  injuries  came  out  with 
greater  distinctness,  especially  the  horizontal  line  over  the  XVIII. 
Some  marks  in  the  upper  corner  of  the  bronze,  over  CAESARIS,  were 
examined,  but  they  did  not  shape  themselves  into  letters.  At  this 
stage  the  work  was  suspended. 

Some  minor  points  of  the  inscriptions  may  now  be  considered. 
AXE0HKE  of  the  Greek  is  sometimes  used  in  the  sense  of  "conse- 
crating," sometimes  of  "  setting  up  "  simply.  In  the  former  case,  it 
usually  has  the  object  of  consecration  expressed  in  the  dative  case ; 
but  C.  I.  4684!)  is  an  example,  among  others,  where  this  is  omitted 
altogether.  For  its  employment  in  relation  to  obelisks,  we  have  the 
authority  of  Herodotus  (ii.  1 1 1),  where  he  says  that  two  obelisks  were 
erected  and  consecrated  by  King  Pheros  at  the  Temple  of  the  Sun 
in  Heliopolis.  In  like  manner  Pliny  (xxxvi.  14)  uses  POSVIT  when 
speaking  of  an  obelisk  erected  by  Rameses  in  the  same  city. 

The  published  APXITEKTON  OYNTOS  is,  of  course,  an  impossibility 
for  APXITEKTONOYNTOS,  as  it  is  written  on  the  bronze.  The  ex- 
pression is  employed  just  as  in  Plutarch  (Pericl.  13),  where  he  says 
that  "  the  Propylaea  of  the  Acropolis  was  completed  within  the  space 
of  five  years,  MvrimK\tovg  OPXITIKTOVOVVTOS"  Similarly,  C.  I.  489yd. 
For  the  use  of  the  noun  APXITEKTQN,  of  one  who  superintends 
the  transportation  of  these  huge  masses  of  stone,  we  have  again 
the  authority  of  Herodotus  (ii.  175),  when  describing  the  conveyance 


25  THE   OBELISK-CRAB   INSCRIPTIONS 

of  an  enormous  monolithic  chapel  from  Elephantine  to  Sais  in  the 
time  of  Amasis. 

The  X  of  APXITEKTONOYNTOS  appears  at  first  sight  no  more 
than  half  made ;  but  this  is  simply  due  to  the  oxidation  which  has 
closed  up  the  lower  part  of  both  branches,  and  the  outline  of  the  one 
on  the  left  can  be  easily  traced.1 

On  the  opposite  side  of  the  bronze  it  seems  doubtful  if  the  E  of 
AEGYPTI  was  ever  cut  in  full ;  some  depressions  about  the  lower  part 
do  not  appear  to  be  connected  with  the  small  E  above.  The  char- 
acter Y  is  the  Greek,  not  the  Latin,  form  of  the  letter,  and  similarly 
the  FT  for  PT  is  a  common  form  on  the  coins  of  the  Ptolemies,  often 
employed  there  as  the  monogram  of  the  name  of  those  kings.  This 
led  me  at  the  outset  to  suppose  that  the  engraver  was  a  Greek,  as, 
indeed,  would  accord  naturally  with  the  circumstances  of  the  day  at 
Alexandria,  and  might  explain  the  apparent  addition  to  the  final  I  of 
the  word,  if  it  is  a  genuine  original  cut.  The  three  letters  last  en- 
graved having  been  Greek,  the  workman  had  unconsciously  begun 
the  next  letter  with  the  form  of  the  Greek  genitive  case,  AirYIlTOY,  in 
his  mind,  and  nearly  formed  an  O  before  he  discovered  his  error. 
Then  he  corrected  it  as  far  as  possible  by  his  very  substantial  I. 
Some  such  confusion  appears  to  be  visible  also  in  the  final  letter  of 
ARCHITECTANTE.  With  these  circumstances  I  connect  the  presence 
of  the  Greek  ¥  in  the  upper  corner  on  this  inside  face,  since  it  may 
well  be  the  initial  of  the  engraver. 

An  example  of  the  combination  of  the  repeated  iT  we  have  upon 
the  coin  of  M.  Lepidus,  which  he  had  struck  to  commemorate  his  ap- 
pointment by  the  Roman  Senate  as  guardian  of  the  youthful  Ptolemy 
Epiphanes  (B.C.  204-180):  S.C.TVTOR.REG.  M.LEPIDVS.POtf.MAX. 

For  the  expression  ANNOXVIIICAESARIS,  we  have  a  parallel,  en- 
graved by  a  later  prefect,  on  the  so-called  vocal  statue  of  Memnon 
at  Thebes,  as  follows:  ANNO.VII.IMP.CAESARIS.NERVAE.TRAIANI. 
AUG.GER.DACICI.C.VIBIVS.MAXIMVS.PRAEF.AEG.AVDIT.MEMXOXEM. 
XIIII.K.MAR.HORA.IIS.SEMEL.III.SEM. 

The  pages  of  ancient  writers  are  totally  and  provokingly  silent 
concerning  Publius  Rubrius  Barbarus,  though  in  this  he  has  shared 

1  This  letter  has  since  been  cleared  out  and  appears  as  shown  in  the  fac-simile. 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  2J 

a  common  fate  with  the  two  prefects  who  followed  him,  Turranius, 
B.C.  7,'  and  Octavius,  A.D.  i,  who  are  certainly  known  to  us  only 
through  a  single  inscription  each.  The  Rubrian  family  was  of  ple- 
beian origin,  and  attained  to  equestrian  rank,  but  never  played  any 
very  important  part  in  history.  The  first  appearance  of  the  name  is 
in  connection  with  the  reforms  of  Tiberius  Gracchus,  B.C.  133.  Some 
Rubrius  was  tribune  of  the  people,  and  presided  at  the  election  for 
the  coming  year ;  and,  though  the  friend  of  Gracchus,  he  did  not  act 
with  sufficient  firmness  at  a  critical  moment,  and  the  death  of  his  col- 
league was  the  result." 

Again,  a  Rubrius  is  mentioned  by  Plutarch'  as  tribune,  a  colleague 
and  supporter  of  Caius  Gracchus.  He  brought  forward,  in  the  in- 
terest of  Gracchus,  a  proposal  known  as  the  Rubrian  law,  for  the  col- 
onization of  Carthage,  B.C.  123. 

Historians  have  clearly  shown  how  the  principles  of  the  Gracchi 
were  handed  down  through  Marius  to  Julius  Caesar  till  they  culmi- 
nated in  the  empire,  and  that  a  regular  succession  is  to  be  found  in 
what  may  be  termed  the  Gracchan-Marian-Caesarian  party.  We  find 
the  Rubrii  attached  to  this  party  at  the  outset,  and  it  is  a  noticeable 
circumstance  that  this  attachment  seems  to  have  been  continued  with 
unusual  fidelity,  except  under  the  influence  of  Cato,  in  B.C.  49.  In  the 
Marian  troubles  Q.  Rubrius  Varro  was  adjudged  an  enemy  to  the 
state  by  the  Senate,  along  with  Marius  himself,  in  B.C.  88.  Cicero 
describes  him  as  a  sharp  and  vehement  prosecutor.4 

L.  Rubrius  Dossenus  was  master  of  the  mint,  and  struck  numerous 
coins  between  87  and  81  B.C.  Their  date  is  determined  by  the  nature 
of  the  find  at  Montecodruzzo. 

Cicero  mentions  °  a  Rubrius  in  the  train  of  Verres  at  Lampsacus, 
and  gives  him  a  rather  bad  character.  Of  Publius  and  Quintus 
Rubrius,  who  were  in  Sicily  under  Verres  about  70  B.C.,  Cicero  speaks 
in  more  flattering  language.6 

1  This  date,  though  left  somewhat  in  doubt  by  the  "  Corpus,"  is  now  fixed  by  Wescher, 
who  examined  it  carefully  when  at  Philae. 

2  Appian,  Bel.  Civil,  i.  14.  '  C.  Gracch.  x.  *  Brut.  45. 
5  In  Verr.  i.  25.                                               *  In  Verr.  iii.  57,  80. 


2g  THE  OBELISK-CRAB  INSCRIPTIONS 

An  inscription  from  Capua  mentions  Aulus  Rubrius,  son  of  Aulus, 
B.C.  7 1.1  Another  still  earlier,  B.C.  104,  speaks  of  N.  Rubrius,  son  of 
Marcus,  at  the  same  place.* 

M.  Rubrius  was  pretor  in  Macedonia  about  67  B.C.,  and  under 
him  the  younger  Cato  served  as  military  tribune.' 

Cicero  mentions  a  Rubria  who  was  the  mother  of  his  friend  Carbo.4 

L.  Rubrius,  a  senator,  joined  the  party  of  Pompey  when  Caesar 
was  crossing  the  Rubicon,  and  so  many  were  of  two  minds,  was  taken 
prisoner  at  Corfinium  and  pardoned  on  the  spot,  B.C.  49.' 

Within  the  same  year,  or  soon  after,  some  Rubrius,  as  tribune  of 
the  people,  according  to  Mommsen,8  brought  forward  the  law  known 
as  the  Rubrian,  relating  to  citizenship  in  Cisalpine  Gaul.  This  was 
done  in  the  interest,  and  at  the  dictation,  of  Caesar. 

M.  Rubrius,  who  was  with  Cato  in  Utica,  B.C.  46,  I  take  to  be  the 
one  above  mentioned  as  Cato's  old  commander  in  Macedonia.7 

About  this  time  is  to  be  placed  the  L.  Rubrius  of  Casinum,  who 
made  Antony  his  heir,  passing  over  his  own  nephew,  although  he 
had  never  seen  Antony,  and  did  not  know  whether  he  was  black  or 
white,  as  Cicero  says,  in  his  Philippic  strain.8 

An  actor  named  Rubritis  resembled  so  closely  the  orator  Plancus, 
Pliny  tells  us,'  that  he  obtained  his  surname  from  him. 

Rubrius  Rex,  or  Ruga,  is  named  by  Appian  10  as  one  of  the  assas- 
sins of  Caesar.  Nicolaus  of  Damascus  "  adds  that  Minucius,  while 
striking  at  the  Dictator  with  his  dagger,  wounded  Rubrius  in  the  thigh. 

Next  comes  an  inscription  "  originally  read  by  Muratori  towards 
the  beginning  of  the  last  century  at  Monte  Casino,  the  ancient  Casi- 
num. It  declares  that  P.  Rubrius  M.  F.  MAELARBA  dedicates  some 
monument  to  Augustus  in  B.C.  21." 

1  Orelli,  6119.  •  Wilm.  No.  2018. 

3  Plut.  Cato  Min.  9;  Drumann,  Gesch.  v.  p.  154.     *  Epist.  ad  Fam.  ix.  21. 
5  Caes.  Bel.  Civil.  23.  6  C.  I.  L.  i.  p.  118 ;  Hermes,  1881,  i. 

7  Plut.  Cato  Min.  62.  •  Phil.  ii.  16.  •  Nat.  Hist.  vii.  10. 

14  Bel.  Civil,  ii.  1 13.  "  Vit.  Aug.  M  Orelli,  No.  597. 

IMP.  CAESARI 

DIVI.  F.  AVGVSTO 

COS.  XI.  IMP.  VIII. 

TRIBVNIC.  POTESTAT.  III. 

P.  RVBRIVS.  M.  F.  MAELARBA. 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  2g 

P.  Rubrius  BARBARVS  is  prefect  of  Egypt,  B.C.  13-12. 

An  inscription '  informs  us  that  Rubria  Ichmas  (a  freedwoman  of 
the  Rubrian  family)  was  nurse  of  Quinta,  daughter  of  Barbarus.  She 
died  at  the  age  of  fifty,  and  her  memorial  was  erected  by  Daphnus, 
the  butler  of  T.  Rubrius  Nepos. 

Another  inscription *  says  that  T.  Rubrius  Nepos  was  curator  of 
aqueducts  with  A.  Didius  Gallus  and  M.  Cornelius  Firmus,  of  whom 
Didius  Gallus  is  mentioned  by  Frontinus  as  holding  this  office  from 
A.D.  39  to  49. 

In  the  reign  of  Augustus  an  impostor  attempted  to  palm  herself 
off  as  a  real  Rubria  who  was  supposed  to  have  perished  in  a  confla- 
gration at  Mediolanum ;  but  the  emperor  refused  to  admit  her  into  the 
gens,  though  supported  by  numerous  witnesses  of  the  place,  and  by 
the  "  Augustan  cohort,"  and  finally  she  was  compelled  to  retire  baffled.8 

An  inscription 4  gives  us  another  native  of  Casinum,  M.  Rubrius 
Proculus,  who  was  an  Augustalis  or  priest  of  the  deified  Augustus. 

Rubrius,  a  Roman  knight,  was  accused  before  Tiberius  of  violating 
the  name  of  the  deified 'Augustus  by  perjury.  Tiberius  treated  the 
case  lightly,  and  declared  that  the  gods  could  take  care  of  such  cases 
themselves.5 

Rubrius  Fabatus  was  arrested  in  flight  to  the  Parthians,  A.D.  32, 
but  received  no  punishment." 

Rubrius  Pollio  was  in  high  favor  with  Claudius  on  his  return 
from  Britain,  A.D.  44.* 

One  of  the  family  was  a  vestal  virgin  maltreated  by  Nero,8  and 
another  a  court  physician,  noted  for  the  extravagant  fees  he  received.9 

Rubrius  Gallus  was  sent  by  Nero,  A.D.  68,  against  Galba,  after  his 
revolt;10  and  a  Rubrius  Gallus  was  consul  A.D.  101.  This  appears  to 
have  been  the  highest  post  to  which  any  of  the  family  attained  at 
Rome.  I  have  gathered  a  large  number  of  inscriptions  in  which  the 
name  occurs,  in  various  parts  of  Italy,  Spain,  Dalmatia,  Pannonia, 
Greece,  Asia  Minor,  and  Africa,  but  little  is  to  be  extracted  from 

1  C.  I.  L.  vi.  9245.  2  C.  I.  L.  vi.  1 248.  3  Val.  Max.  ix.  1 5. 

*  Muratori,  1036,  6.  5  Tac.  An.  i.  73.  6  Tac.  An.  vi.  14. 

7  Dio,  Ix.  23.  8  Suet.  Nero,  28.  9  Pliny,  xxix.  5. 

10  Dio,  Ixiii.  27. 


<,Q  THE  OBELISK-CRAB   INSCRIPTIONS 

the  bare  list,  especially  as  few  are  dated ;  but  there  are  two  which  re- 
veal more  than  inscriptions  usually  do.  At  Brixia,  as  it  appears, 
lived  P.  Rubrius  Celer,  who  erected  a  memorial  to  his  dear  and  loving 
wife,  with  whom  he  had  lived  forty-three  years  and  eight  months  sine 
querela,  without  a  single  complaint.  T.  Rubrius  lived  at  Rome  for 
seventy-five  years  and  taught  for  fifty. 

The  object  in  collecting  the  series  of  Rubrii  above  was,  of  course, 
to  glean  what  information  was  possible  touching  our  prefect.  In 
piecing  together  such  disconnected  accounts,  one  must  needs  run 
some  hazard ;  but  a  certain  combination  has  seemed  to  me  possible, 
and  I  venture  to  advance  it  with  the  proviso  that  it  is  subject  to  re- 
vision or  complete  rejection,  like  any  other  tentative  conjecture.  It 
is  based,  in  the  first  place,  upon  the  belief  that  P.  Rubrius  MAE- 
LARBA,  who  dedicated  the  monument  at  Casinum  to  Augustus, 
B.C.  21,  is  in  reality  P.  Rubrius  BARBARVS,  MAELARBA  being  either  a 
misreading  for  BARBARVS  on  a  stone  somewhat  defaced  or  incrusted 
by  time  (BARBARVS  of  the  crab  having  been  quite  as  desperate  be- 
fore it  was  cleaned),  or  else  a  misreading  in  some  other  way  for  the 
same.  The  name  MAELARBA  seems  unprecedented ;  at  all  events, 
I  have  hunted  for  it  through  many  myriads  of  Roman  names  in 
ancient  authors  and  inscriptions,  and  have  yet  to  find  a  single 
instance  of  its  recurrence.  Furthermore,  the  name  of  Muratori, 
who  first  copied  the  inscription  (220,  8,  "  e  schedis  meis"),  is  almost  a 
by-word  among  men  of  that  craft,  not  only  for  carelessness,  but  for 
arbitrary  changes  which  he  introduced  into  his  readings ;  so  that  of 
his  fifteen  thousand  inscriptions  more  than  one  thousand  have  been 
given  in  an  emended  form  by  his  more  painstaking  and  accurate 
successors  in  that  department  of  study.  I  conceive,  then,  that  in  a 
hurried  hour  Muratori  transcribed  the  inscription  accurately  enough 
in  the  important  part  relating  to  Augustus,  but  the  last  word  after 
an  insignificant  name  he  did  not  take  the  trouble  to  decipher  with 
care,  but  wrote  down  what  the  letters  seemed  to  him  most  nearly  to 
resemble,  since  he  gives  us  no  hint  of  any  mutilation  of  the  monu- 
ment. If  the  stone  is  still  in  existence  to  disprove 'this  theory,  I 
shall  hasten  to  offer  my  heartiest  apologies  to  the  memory  of  the 
good  Muratori  for  slandering  him ;  but  I  have  not  yet  been  able  to 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  -j 

ascertain  that  it  has  been  read  by  any  other  editor.  It  is  quite  pos- 
sible that  it  now  rests  among  the  treasures  of  the  old  Benedictine 
monastery  at  Monte  Casino,  among  the  Sabine  hills  southeast  of 
Rome,  and  I  have  written  to  W.  Henzen,  First  Secretary  to  the  Im- 
perial Archaeological  Institute  of  Germany,  and  one  of  the  editors 
of  the  Roman  inscriptions  now  publishing,  and  I  hope  soon  to  have 
some  more  accurate  information  in  relation  to  it. 

That  this  P.  Rubrius  of  Casinum  is  a  zealous  partisan  of  Augus- 
tus in  B.C.  2 1  is  plain  from  the  inscription,  and  he  is  here  engaged  in 
doing  on  a  smaller  scale  what  the  grander  prefect  of  Egypt  did  later 
on  at  Phike.  Furthermore,  he  is  the  son  of  Marcus — perhaps  the  very 
Marcus  who  was  the  pretor  in  Macedonia  and  the  friend  of  Cato ; 
perhaps,  too,  the  nephew  of  L.  Rubrius  of  Casinum,  who  is  brought 
into  relation  with  Caesar  or  Augustus  and  his  followers  by  the  be- 
queathal  of  his  property  to  Antony,  passing  over  his  nephew,  who 
could  take  care  of  himself,  or  might  even  be  furthered  in  his  career 
by  such  action  of  the  uncle.  Again,  the  mover  of  the  Rubrian  law 
in  49  must  have  been  a  trusty  adherent  of  Caesar  to  have  been  selected 
by  him  among  his  colleagues  for  that  important  duty ;  and  conceiv- 
ing this  to  have  been  his  first  entrance  into  public  life  as  tribune  of 
the  people,  at  about  thirty  years,  P.  Rubrius  would  be  of  a  fitting  age 
in  B.C.  13-12  for  the  responsible  duties  of  Egyptian  prefect,  and  to 
be  numbered  in  that  series  of  "  sober  and  discreet  men,"  as  Strabo 
calls  them,1  who  succeeded  each  other  in  that  important  office.  At 
all  events,  some  such  career  as  this  just  outlined  he  must  needs  have 
followed,  to  attain  a  position  which  was  almost  the  equal  of  kings; 
and,  according  to  the  policy  of  Augustus,  laid  down  at  the  outset  in 
relation  to  that  post,  he  must  have  been  of  equestrian  rank  and  a  fa- 
vored and  favorite  partisan  of  the  emperor  himself.  His  cognomen 
Barbarus  may  have  been  won  in  some  campaigns  in  which  he  distin- 
guished himself  against  the  enemies  of  Rome,  or  it  may  have  been 
given  him  by  his  father  in  commemoration  of  some  of  his  own  ex- 
ploits. He  was  evidently  proud  of  it,  selecting  it  alone,  as  he  did,  to 
perpetuate  himself  on  the  great  monument  of  the  obelisk.  It  is  not 
a  very  common  appellation,  but  we  find  an  Atilius  Barbarus  who  was 

1  Strabo,  797. 


*2  THE   OBELISK-CRAB   INSCRIPTIONS 

consul  in  A.D.  72,  and  M.  Civica  Barbarus  consul  A.D.  157.  A  few 
others  might  be  cited  from  the  inscriptions,  but  they  are  few,  as  I 
have  said. 

If  the  Barbarus  mentioned  above,  whose  daughter  Ouinta  was 
nursed  by  Rubria  Ichmas,  is  to  be  identified  with  our  Barbarus,  as 
seems  possible,  we  have  a  bit  of  family  history,  to  the  effect  that  he 
\vas  the  father  of  five  daughters.  When  the  prefect  returned  from 
Egypt  he  would  naturally  have  been  accompanied  by  a  large  train 
of  slaves  whom  he  had  gathered  about  him  in  his  almost  regal  state. 
Many  of  these  would  become  manumitted  for  their  fidelity,  ability,  or 
other  cause,  and  would  then,  as  was  the  custom,  take  the  prenomen 
and  gentile  name  of  their  master,  together  with  a  specific  cognomen 
of  their  own,  usually  that  by  which  they  had  been  known  before. 
The  close  connection  between  our  Rubrius  and  the  emperor  is  again 
exhibited  by  the  fact  that  a  number  of  these  freedmen  became  at- 
tached to  the  house  of  Augustus,  and  their  memorials  are  found  in 
the  columbaria  or  vaults  where  such  retainers  of  the  imperial  family 
were  buried.  One  of  these  columbaria,  discovered  in  1852  on  the 
Appian  Way  near  the  tomb  of  the  Scipios,  and  containing  the  names 
of  Augustus,  Tiberius,  Julia,  and  Germanicus,  also  disclosed  the  fol- 
lowing list  of  Rubrian  liberti :  P.  Rubrius,  Rubria ;'  P.  Rubrius  Abas- 
cantus,  Rubria  Lexis,  P.  Rubrius  Polybius;'  P.  Rubrius  Anicetus, 
Rubria  Thallusa;3  P.  Rubrius  Hilarus,  Rubria  Glymene;4  P.  Rubrius 
Gatis,  P.  Rubrius  P.  ...  ;6  P.  Rubrius  Hilarus,  Rubria  Aprodisia, 
freedwoman  of  Publius;8  P.  Rubrius  Priscus,  Rubria  Hermais;7  Ru- 
bria Veneria,  P.  Rubrius  Myrsinus,  Rubria  Galene.8  Another  simi- 
lar columbarium,  found  near  the  Porta  Latina  in  1831,  contains  the 
name  of  P.  Rubrius  Epaphroditus.9 

Such  are  the  meagre  details  which  may  be  patched  up  from  the 
disjecta  membra  of  antiquity  in  relation  to  this  family,  which  has  be- 
come so  interesting  a  one  to  us  through  the  erection  of  our  obelisk 
at  Alexandria  by  one  of  its  members,  and  the  re-erection  of  the  same 
here  in  our  midst,  and  our  possession  of  the  memorial  which  he  had 

'  C.  I.  L.  vi.  5284.  *  Ibid.  5334.  3  Ibid.  5335. 

*  Ibid.  5336.  s  Ibid.  5346.  •  Ibid.  5465. 

7  Ibid.  5466.  8  Ibid.  5467.  *  Ibid.  5616. 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  -- 

inscribed  to  his  own  honor  as  well  as  to  that  of  his  beloved  Qesar. 
What  further  light  may  be  thrown  upon  the  family  by  inscriptions 
discovered  and  not  yet  published,  or  yet  to  be  discovered,  is  left  for 
the  future  to  disclose. 


The  foregoing  had  been  written  and  submitted,  as  you  will  re- 
member, Sir,  to  yourself,  Professor  Drisler,  and  others,  as  early  as  the 
1 5th  of  March.  On  the  2d  of  April,  in  answer  to  my  letter  to  Dr. 
Henzen,  a  reply  was  received,  from  which  the  following  is  extracted : 

"  In  my  opinion,  it  is  most  probable  that  the  inscription  of 
Casinum,  Orelli,  597,  belongs  to  your  prefect ;  you  may  find  the 
right  reading  in  Mommsen's  '  Inscrip.  Regni  Neapol.'  4229,  and  will 
find  it  in  a  few  weeks  in  the  C.  I.  L.  x.  No.  5169,  that  volume  being 
almost  ready  to  appear.  The  true  text  of  the  inscription  is  this : 


IMP.  CAESARI.  DIVI.  F 

AVGVSTO 

COS.  XL  IMP.  VII 

TRIBVNIC.  POTESTA 


P.  RVBRIVS.  M.  F.  MAE.  BARBA  rus 

It  has  been  copied  by  Brunn,  and  Mommsen  himself.  Brunn  be- 
lieved that  he  saw  part  of  a  T  at  the  end  of  the  last  line,  and  Momm- 
sen, in  the  C.  I.  L.,  supplies  BARBAtus ;  but  I  think  there  may  have 
been  vestiges  of  the  vertical  line  that  may  have  belonged  as  well  to 
an  R  as  to  a  T." 

My  conjecture,  then,  is  happily  confirmed  in  this  particular,  and 
the  connection  of  the  other  Rubrii  at  Casinum  is  greatly  strengthened, 
while  this  town  is  proved  to  have  been  the  seat  of  that  branch  of  the 
Rubrian  family  to  which  Barbarus  belonged. 

Obtaining  access  to  the  "  Inscrip.  Regni  Neapol."  of  Mommsen, 
referred  to  by  Dr.  Henzen,  I  find  the  following  note  upon  the  read- 
ings of  the  last  line  of  the  inscription :  "  MAE.  E,  Ambr.  sched. ; 
MAELARBA,  frater;  MAELARBA,  reliqui ;  dedi  conjecturam  (MAE. 
BARBA)  Kellermanni."  It  will  be  observed  that  in  the  third  line 
IMP.  VII  is  now  read  for  the  IMP.  VIII  of  Muratori,  and  in  the  fourth 


-.  THE  OBELISK-CRAB  INSCRIPTIONS 

line  TRIBUNIC.POTESTA  for  his  TRIBUNIC.POTEST.III.  This  leaves 
the  question  of  date  somewhat  in  doubt.  Augustus  was  COS.  XI 
in  B.C.  23,  but  retained  the  same  title  for  seventeen  years.1  He  is 
known  to  have  been  styled  IMP.  VII  in  B.C.  29,  and  Eckhel  supposed 
that  he  had  fixed  the  limit  of  its  use  by  this  inscription  of  Casinum  as 
read  by  Muratori ;  but  this  is  now  left  doubtful.  We  find,  however, 
the  title  IMP.  VIII  on  coins  assigned  to  B.C.  20,'  and  IMP.  IX  in  the 
year  19.'  The  Tribunician  power  in  perpetuity  was  bestowed  on  the 
emperor  in  the  year  23,  probably  on  the  2;th  of  June,  and  it  was 
numbered  annually  from  that  date  on  to  his  death.  The  probability 
is,  therefore,  that  our  inscription  falls  into  the  years  23-22,  or  not  long 
after,  certainly  not  later  than  20. 

The  slab  upon  which  this  inscription  was  found  is  described  as  a 
particolored  marble,  engraved  with  very  beautiful  letters,  and  still 
preserved  among  the  antiquities  at  Monte  Casino.  Muratori  un- 
doubtedly did  copy  in  haste,  and  took  no  account  of  the  injury  which 
the  slab  had  received  upon  the  right  side.  "  MAE."  is  an  abbrevia- 
tion for  MAECIA,  the  tribe  to  which  Barbarus  belonged.  Such  addi- 
tion to  a  proper  name  is  frequent  in  inscriptions  and  legal  documents. 

Somewhat  later  in  the  day  on  the  2d  of  April  I  received  another 
letter  from  Dr.  Henzen,  as  follows : 

"  When  I  wrote  you  the  other  day,  I  forgot  to  tell  you  that  the 
inscription  of  your  obelisk  has  been  amply  illustrated  by  Professor 
Lumbroso  in  the  Bullettino  of  the  Institute,  1878,  p.  54,  and  by 
Mommsen, '  Ephem.  Epigr.'  iv.  p.  27.  You  will  find  there  all  we  may 
know  about  that  prefect,  except  the  inscription  of  Casinum,  which 
you  very  probably  refer  to  him." 

This  seemed  to  portend  that  much  of  my  work  had  been  antici- 
pated. At  all  events,  the  correctness  of  the  inscription  would  be 
challenged  on  the  ground  of  the  impossibility  of  the  prefecture  of 
Barbarus  falling  in  the  year  23-22,  when  Strabo  says  that  Petronius 
was  prefect.  Hastening  to  the  Bullettino  for  1878  I  found  the  article 
of  Professor  Lumbroso,  from  which  I  translate  the  substance : 

"  In  the  '  Bulletin  de  correspondance  hellenique,'  December  i, 


1  Suet.  Aug.  26.  *  Cohen,  Descrip.  Monn.  No.  79.  *  Cohen,  Nos.  37,  40. 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK,  -e 

1877,  there  is  related  the  notable  discovery  in  Alexandria  on  the 
2oth  of  June,  1877,  of  a  bilingual  inscription  in  Greek  and  Latin, 
which  was  read  by  Mr.  Neroutsos,  upon  the  right  claw  of  the  mutilated 
crab  found  under  the  standing  obelisk.  It  reads  as  follows  : 


L  H  KAI2APOS  4to*n«. 

BAPBAPOS  ANEOHKE 
APXITEKTONOYNTOS 


ARCHlTECTANTE  PONTlO 

"  Wescher  published  in  the  Bullettino  for  1866  a  fac-simile  of  an 
inscription  from  Philae,  dedicated  by  the  prefect  of  Egypt,  P.  Rubrius 
Barbarus,  in  the  eighteenth  year  of  Augustus  (see  above,  p.  19),  in 
which  it  will  be  observed  that  the  1  adscript  of  EYEPFETH  is  not 
written,  as  it  is  in  the  preceding  word  2EBA2TGI,  a  fact  which 
Wescher  has  not  noticed.  As  this  is  an  anomaly,  though  not  with- 
out precedent,  the  suspicion  arises  that  this  I  ought  to  be  found  in 
the  vertical  limb  of  the  L  (EYEPFETHL-IH),  while  the  following  I  of 
the  inscription  is  really  the  L  or  symbol  for  the  year  ;  consequently, 
the  Philae  inscription  and  that  of  the  crab  belong  to  one  and  the 
same  year,  and  the  lacuna  which  the  series  of  prefects  of  Egypt 
presents  is  now  filled  in  the  eighth  year  of  Augustus." 

This  seems  harsh  treatment  for  an  inscription  whose  letters  are 
"  large  and  well  formed,"  and  read  by  two  very  careful  archaeologists, 
Wescher  and  Mariette-Bey,  to  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  Barbarus 
is  now  proved  by  the  inscription  from  Casinum  to  have  been  quietly 
at  home  in  that  "  noteworthy  town,"  as  Strabo  calls  it,  at  about  the 
time  that  he  is  made  prefect  of  Egypt  by  Lumbroso. 

But,  at  all  events,  we  are  getting  back  to  the  origin  of  the  errors 
in  our  inscription  as  published  here.  Lumbroso  has  copied  it  from 
Neroutsos,  and  when  his  version  is  compared  with  that  with  which 
we  began  at  the  very  outset,  it  will  be  seen  that  they  differ  in  two 
particulars  only.  ANNO  is  no  longer  written,  as  by  Neroutsos, 
with  broken  lines,1  as  doubtful  or  supplied  from  the  Greek,  and 
APXITEKTONOYNTO2  has  become  APXITEKTON  OYNTOS.  In  both, 

i  I  find  later  that  both  in  the  Alexandrian  paper,  as  copied  by  Mommsen,  and  in  the 
Bulletin  of  1878,  Neroutsos  wrote  Anno  without  broken  lines. 

3 


-6  THE   OBELISK-CRAB   INSCRIPTIONS 

we  find  AVGVSTI  interpolated  where  it  never  existed,  and  BARBARVS 
is  written  in  the  Latin  without  the  slightest  hint  that  any  difficulty 
attended  the  reading.  It  is  true  that  this  is  now  proved  to  be 
correct,  but  such  treatment  of  an  inscription  reminds  us  too  strongly 
of  Muratori  to  be  palatable. 

While  waiting  to  obtain  Mommsen's  "  Ephemeris  Epigraphica,"  I 
turn  to  the  files  of  the  London  Times  to  see  what  attention  the  in- 
scription received  in  England  when  the  companion  obelisk  was 
brought  to  London.  From  Commander  Gorringe's  "  Obelisks  "  I  had 
learned  only  that  Mr.  Dixon  had  seen  it.  The  story  is  best  told  by 
the  following  extracts : 

From  the  issue  of  July  4,  1877.  A  telegram  from  Paris  says: 
"  An  Alexandrian  letter  in  the  Cologne  Gazette  states  that  on  laying 
bare  the  socle  of  the  obelisk  about  to  be  removed  to  London,  Mr. 
Dixon  discovered  a  Greek  and  Latin  inscription  to  the  effect  that 
Barbarus,  Governor  of  Egypt,  erected  the  obelisk  through  the  archi- 
tect Pontius,  in  the  eighth  year  of  Augustus." 

October  15,  1877.  This  issue  contained  a  review  of  a  pamphlet 
on  the  obelisks,  just  published  by  Dr.  Erasmus  Wilson,  through  whose 
munificence  the  London  obelisk  was  conveyed  to  its  present  site. 
"  Mr.  Wilson  has  done  well  to  rectify  the  first  interpretation  put  upon 
the  interesting  monumental  date  of  the  erection  of  the  pair  of  obelisks 
before  the  Water-Gate  of  the  Caesareum  at  Alexandria,  which  was 
found  on  the  bronze  supports  of  the  standing  obelisk  during  the  opera- 
tions for  removal  of  the  British  Needle.  They  were  set  up  in  the 
eighth  year  of  Augustus,  which  was  referred  erroneously  to  the  Italian 
era  of  the  emperor,  B.C.  27,  instead  of  to  the  local  era  of  Alexandria, 
B.C.  30,  giving  B.C.  23,  as  our  author  says.  .  .  .  Cleopatra  might  have 
designed  their  removal  from  Heliopolis,  as  she  may  have  designed 
the  temple  of  Caesar  itself." 

November  19,  1877.  A  lecture  was  delivered  by  Mr.  Dixon,  on 
the  obelisk. 

November  22,  1877.  The  British  Archaeological  Association 
held  a  meeting  last  night,  at  which  Mr.  Birch,  Keeper  of  Oriental 
Antiquities  in  the  British  Museum,  lectured  on  "  The  Obelisk  known 
as  Cleopatra's  Needle."  The  Chairman  (George  Goodwin,  F.R.S., 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  -- 

F.S.A.,  V.P.),  having  introduced  that  gentleman  as  the  greatest  of  our 
hieroglyphic  scholars,  and  therefore  the  most  competent  to  instruct 
us  on  the  subject,  Dr.  Birch,  in  the  course  of  his  address,  described 
more  particularly  the  Alexandrian  obelisks  and  their  inscriptions.  He 
also  spoke  of  the  date  recorded  on  Cleopatra's  Needle  as  that  of  the 
erection  of  the  obelisk.  ...  At  the  close  of  the  lecture  Mr.  Dixon 
made  some  remarks  on  the  shipping  of  the  obelisk,  and  on  his  dis- 
covery of  the  Greek  and  Latin  inscriptions  on  either  side  of  the  claw 
of  one  of  the  bronze  crabs  supporting  the  standing  Needle.  His  ob- 
servations were  illustrated  by  photographs  and  enlarged  diagrams. 

April  10,  1878.  Two  days  ago  Professor  Donaldson  lectured  on 
the  obelisk  before  the  Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects. 

August  7,  1878.  Dr.  Birch  furnishes  a  complete  translation  of 
the  hieroglyphics  of  the  obelisk. 

September  13,  1878.  The  obelisk  was  erected  upon  the  Thames 
Embankment  yesterday.  It  was  set  up  at  Alexandria  in  the  eighth 
year  of  Augustus,  B.C.  23,  along  with  the  still-standing  Needle,  in  front 
of  the  Sea-Gate  of  the  temple  founded  by  the  beautiful  queen  in  honor 
of  her  lover,  the  deified  Julius,  on  occasion  of  the  birth  of  her  son 
Caesarion. 

September  14,  1878.  The  objects  deposited  in  the  core  of  the 
obelisk  pedestal  were  copies  of  "  Engineering,"  printed  on  vellum, 
with  plans  of  the  various  arrangements  and  details  employed  in 
erecting  and  transporting  the  obelisk,  together  with  its  complete 
history. 

In  the  meantime,  the  war  over  the  site  for  the  obelisk  had  been 
carried  on  by  innumerable  letters  from  Wilson,  Palgrave,  Lord  Har- 
rowby,  R.  A.  Procter,  and  others,  but  no  word  of  warning  that  the 
date  of  the  inscriptions  might  be  wrong  appears  to  have  been 
spoken. 

October  21,  1878.  Upon  the  base  of  the  obelisk  are  to  be  affixed 
bronze  plates  bearing  inscriptions,  of  which  the  text  is  prepared  by 
such  scholars  as  Dr.  Birch  and  Dean  Stanley,  and  approved  by  her 
Majesty.  They  have  been  referred  to  a  committee  of  the  Metropol- 
itan Board  of  Works.  Facing  the  roadway,  the  inscription  is  to  read 
thus :  "  This  obelisk  .  .  .  removed  to  Alexandria,  the  royal  city  of 

183320 


,g  THE   OBELISK-CRAB   INSCRIPTIONS 

Cleopatra.  It  was  erected  in  the  seventh  (sic)1  year  of  Augustus 
Caesar,  B.C  23." 

January  31,  1882.  The  bronze  inscribed  tablets  are  ready  to  be 
affixed.  The  inscription  is  as  follows :  "  Removed  during  the  Greek 
dynasty  to  Alexandria,  the  royal  city  of  Cleopatra.  It  was  erected  in 
the  ninth  (sic)1  year  of  Augustus  Caesar,  B.C.  23." 

February  14,  1882.     The  tablets  were  affixed  last  week. 

Here,  side  by  side  with  the  inscriptions  in  London,  it  may  be  prop- 
er to  place  those  on  our  own  obelisk  touching  the  same  point.  On 
the  restored  crab  at  the  southeast  corner,  we  read  on  the  right  claw : 

(Outside)  (Inside) 

"  L  H  KAISAP02  ANNO  vm 

BAPBAPOS  ANE9HKE  AVGVSTI  CAESARIS 

APXITEKTONOYNTOS  BARBARVS  PRAEF 

IIONTIOY  AEGYPTI  POSVIT 

ARCHITECTANTE  POXTIO 
Reproduced  from  the  original." 

At  the  northeast  corner,  the  right  claw  of  the  crab  has, "  Removed 
to  Alexandria  and  erected  there  B.C.  22  by  the  Romans." 

The  dates  now  inscribed  on  the  two  obelisks  will,  therefore,  be 
seen  to  differ  by  a  year,  and,  under  the  former  reading,  ours  was  more 
likely  to  be  right,  in  the  proportion  of  two  to  one,  as  has  already  been 
shown ;  but  this  resulted  from  copying  Neroutsos'  original  error  of 
reckoning  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Augustus  from  29  instead  of 
30  B.C.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that,  when  the  proper  corrections  are  made, 
which  will  be  rendered  necessary  now  that  the  true  date  has  been  as- 
certained, both  countries  will  either  write  the  date  13-12,  or  they 
will  agree  upon  one  or  the  other  of  the  two  years,  so  that  the  two 
obelisks  may  be  in  harmony  upon  this  point  at  least. 

Having  obtained,  through  the  kindness  of  friends,  a  copy  of  the 
"  Ephemeris  Epigraphica,"  in  which  Mommsen  had  published  our 
inscription  in  1879,  we  will  now  examine  his  treatment  of  the  subject. 
He  first  quotes  a  description  of  the  crab  from  Neroutsos,  which,  after 
asserting  that  only  one  of  the  bronze  supports  still  remained  in  posi- 
tion under  the  obelisk,  closes  with  the  extraordinary  statement  that 
"  the  claw  of  the  crab,  with  the  inscriptions,  was  carried  off,  as  it  ap- 

1  Typographical  error. 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  -g 

pears,  a  few  days  after  the  discovery." '  Then,  after  quoting  the  in- 
scriptions exactly  as  given  by  Lumbroso,  Mommsen  says :  "  Neroutsos 
published  this  first  in  an  Alexandrian  paper,  which  Lepsius  sent 
to  me,  then  in  the  'Bulletin  de  correspondance  hellenique,'  i  (1877), 
p.  377,  2  (1878),  p.  175  seq.  I  republished  it  from  there  in  '  Staats- 
recht,'  2",  p.  x.  adn.  The  same  prefect  is  named  in  the  Greek  inscrip- 
tion of  Philae  of  the  year  13-12  B.C.,  published  by  Wescher  (as  above, 
p,  19).  Since  it  is  now  established  from  these  two  inscriptions  that 
Barbarus  was  prefect  in  Egypt  before  the  2gih  of  August,  B.C.  22, 
and  remained  in  the  same  office  at  least  till  B.C.  13,  it  follows  that  my 
remarks  upon  the  '  Monumentum  Ancyranum,'  p.  74,  in  relation  to  the 
first  prefects  of  Egypt,  are  strengthened  and  confirmed.  For  I  there 
stated  that  Cornelius  Callus  was  prefect  to  about  27;  that  ^lius 
Callus  followed  him  through  the  years  26-24 ;  then  Petronius  gov- 
erned the  province  during  23-22  ;  all  which  agrees  aptly  with  these 
inscriptions,  provided  we  assume  that  the  second  expedition  of  Petro- 
nius against  the  Ethiopians  in  22  was  finished  before  the  month  of 
August  of  that  year,  which  nothing  hinders." 

1  "  La  pince  du  crabe  avec  les  inscriptions  a  etc  enlevee,  a  ce  qu'il  parait,  quelques 
jours  apres  la  decouverte."  Since  this  was  written  I  have  succeeded  in  getting  possession 
of  the  two  articles  of  Neroutsos  himself  in  the  "  Bulletin  de  correspondance  hellenique," 
and  find  a  solution  for  his  strange  supposition.  The  passage  quoted  above  appears  in  a 
foot-note,  of  which  Mommsen  gives  only  a  part.  It  continues  as  follows :  "  In  a  photo- 
graph of  the  exposed  base  of  the  obelisk,  taken  just  before  the  earth  that  had  been  re- 
moved was  replaced  as  before,  one  sees  only  the  mutilated  and  disfigured  body  of  the 
crab,  without  a  vestige  of  the  claw  in  question."  This  photograph  must  be  the  same  as 
that  given  by  Commander  Gorringe  ("  Obelisks,"  plate  iv.),  and  the  crab  there  visible  was 
the  one  situated  at  the  corner  diagonally  opposite  to  that  containing  the  inscription,  and 
answers  to  the  description  of  Neroutsos.  It  is  probable  that  when  he  read  the  inscription 
the  excavation  beneath  the  obelisk  was  not  completed,  and  this  led  him  to  suppose  that 
only  one  of  the  crabs  still  remained.  Entire  removal  of  the  accumulation  revealed  the 
other,  and  both  are  now  preserved  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art,  and  photographs 
of  them  can  be  seen  in  Gorringe 's  "  Obelisks,"  plate  v.,  where  the  inscriptions  are  also  vis- 
ible in  much  the  same  form  as  when  this  investigation  was  begun.  There  is  a  point  of  im- 
portance in  both  articles  of  Neroutsos  which  must  not  be  omitted.  In  the  first,  written 
in  modern  Greek,  he  says, "  While  Mr.  Dixon  was  removing  the  incrustation  from  the 
right  claw  of  the  crab  I  read  at  first  dimly,  then  more  clearly  (afivcp&g  TO  irptirov  KM  |JT«- 
TU  KoSapwrtpov),  the  double  inscription."  In  the  second,  written  in  French,  he  speaks 
more  explicitly :  "  While  Mr.  Dixon  was  removing,  by  the  aid  of  acids,  the  thick  crust 
which  covered  the  crab,  I  read,  etc.  (Pendant  que  M.  Dixon  enlevait  a  1'aide  d'acides  la 
rouille  epaisse  qui  couvrait  le  crabe,  je  lisais  .  .  .  )." 


4Q  THE  OBELISK-CRAB   INSCRIPTIONS 

Truly,  this  inscription  experienced  a  curious  series  of  unhappy 
adventures  at  the  hands  of  the  learned  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
within  a  few  months  after  it  was  unearthed  from  its  long  seclusion. 
Not  only  did  the  inscription  itself  have  to  suffer  in  its  integrity,  but 
chronology,  epigraphy,  and  history  must  needs  be  tortured  and  racked 
out  of  all  resemblance  to  their  former  selves,  to  cover  inaccuracy, 
support  conjecture,  or  maintain  pre-existing  theories.  Like  the  slaves 
of  the  ancients,  they  were  not  permitted  to  give  their  testimony  save 
under  stress  of  wheel  and  thumb-screw,  and  naturally  the  evidence 
obtained  is  no  less  worthless  than  much  of  that  must  necessarily 
have  been  which  was  extorted  by  such  means  from  those  hapless 
witnesses. 

In  his  treatment  of  the  testimony  of  Strabo,  Mommsen's  error, 
which  vitiates  his  whole  theory  of  these  prefectures,  is  threefold,  cor- 
responding exactly  to  the  three  points  in  which  the  Geographer  brings 
the  events  of  his  narrative  into  relation  with  occurrences  elsewhere, 
when  he  says,  namely,  that  the  first  Ethiopian  expedition  of  Petro- 
nius  was  undertaken  while  -^lius  was  in  Arabia;  that  his  prisoners 
were  despatched  to  Augustus,  who  had  lately  returned  from  Spain ; 
and  that  the  envoys  of  Candace,  sent  at  the  close  of  the  second  expe- 
dition, found  Augustus  in  Samos,  where  he  spent  the  winter  of  B.C. 
21-20.  The  first  of  these  points  will  be  treated  below;  in  the  second, 
Mommsen  inclines  to  throw  more  weight  upon  the  indefinite  "late- 
ly "  (v£w<m)  than  it  can  bear,  although  his  arrangement  removes  it 
about  two  years ;  the  third  he  totally  ignores.  As  for  Dio,  if  he  is 
not  satisfied  to  adjust  himself  to  the  position  in  which  Mommsen 
places  him,  he  must  shift  for  himself.  By  the  results  of  the  present 
investigation  Strabo  is  completely  vindicated,  as  he  deserves  to  be  for 
his  exceeding  care  about  matters  of  which  he  had  personal  knowledge. 

Mommsen  had  hastened  to  publish  our  inscription  from  the  Alex- 
andrian paper  in  his  "  Staatsrecht,"  as  quoted  above,  in  1877,  for  the 
purpose  of  refuting  the  supposition  of  Friedlander  that  the  reign  of 
Augustus  in  Egypt  was  reckoned  from  the  year  43  B.C.,  a  result  which 
is  secured  equally  by  the  inscription  with  its  proper  date.  This  sup- 
position, however,  needs  no  such  refutation,  and  indeed  was  originally 
advanced  to  account  for  the  strange  coins  that  have  been  found  with 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  .  j 

the  date  of  the  forty-sixth  year  of  Augustus.  These  dates  should 
be  compared  with  the  statement  of  Clemens  Alexandrinus  (p.  863), 
who,  after  fixing  the  length  of  the  reign  of  Augustus  at  forty-three 
years,  says  that  some  make  his  reign  forty-six  years,  four  months,  and 
one  day.  This  would  make  the  year  of  beginning  B.C.  33,  about  the 
1 8th  of  April,  and  it  was  about  this  time  that  Antony  left  Egypt  to 
make  his  preparations  against  Augustus,  and  he  did  not  return  ex- 
cept as  a  vanquished  and  broken  man  after  Actium.  It  seems  pos- 
sible that  some  of  the  flatterers  of  Augustus  may  have  reckoned  his 
reign  from  this  circumstance.  Eusebius  sets  the  era  of  Augustus, 
reckoned  from  B.C.  43,  in  contrast  with  his  Egyptian  era,  reckoned 
from  30,  showing  that  the  former  was  not  Egyptian.1 

Inasmuch  as  the  question  of  the  prefecture  of  Petronius  has  now 
assumed  such  proportions  in  this  discussion,  it  may  be  well  to  treat  the 
matter  more  in  detail,  even  at  the  expense  of  some  repetition.  No 
ancient  author  declares  distinctly  who  succeeded  Cornelius  in  B.C.  26, 
and  Dio  styles  ^Elius  Gallus  prefect  when  speaking  of  the  Arabian 
expedition  ;2  but  this  very  fact  seems  to  show  that  he  has  made  the 
mistake  of  calling  him  prefect  before  he  actually  became  such,  if,  in- 
deed, his  language  really  implies  that  he  was  prefect  at  that  time.  It 
is  idle  to  assume,  as  Mommsen  does,3  that  he  would  have  retained  his 
position  as  prefect  upon  an  expedition  whose  scope  was  so  great  as 
to  include  not  only  Arabia  but  Ethiopia,  granting  that  he  had  been 
prefect  before.  But  besides  that,  we  have  the  testimony  of  Strabo, 
supported  by  Dio,  that  Petronius  was  prefect  while  ^lius  was  in 
Arabia,  which  effectually  silences  Mommsen's  supposition.  Zonaras 
and  Xiphilinus  also  name  /Elius  prefect  when  speaking  of  his  expe- 
dition ;  but  here,  as  so  often,  Zonaras  is  simply  copying  Dio,  as  is 
plain  from  the  cast  of  his  language,  while  Xiphilinus  pretends  to  do 
nothing  but  epitomize  Dio.  Dio  flourished  more  than  two  hundred 
years  after  the  Arabian  expedition,  and  Zonaras  eleven  hundred.  But 
take  the  writers  near  the  epoch  of  the  events  themselves,  and  not  one 
of  them  calls  ^Elius  prefect  during  the  expedition.  Strabo  styles 

1  Hist.  Eccles.  i.  5. 

a  liii.  29  '•  tirl  'Apafliav  .  .  .  AlXiog  FoAAoc  6  rrjs  Alyvwrov  dp\tiiv  iirtarpdnvffe. 

3  Res  Gest.  Div.  Aug.,  p.  76. 


THE  OBELISK-CRAB   INSCRIPTIONS 
42 

him  prefect  twice  (i  18, 806)  when  he  is  describing  their  tour  together 
through  the  province  to  Syene;  but  when  speaking  of  his  expedi- 
tion into  Arabia  (118,  780,  781,  819,  820)  he  never  gives  him  this 
title.  Once  he  designates  him  simply  -^Elius  Gallus,  while  on  the 
tour  (8 1 6)  having  already  called  him  prefect.  Pliny  is  equally  ex- 
plicit. Of  ./Elius,  in  Arabia,  he  mentions  only  his  equestrian  rank  ;* 
but  of  Petronius,  in  Ethiopia,  he  is  careful  to  add  that  he  was  prefect 
of  Egypt.2  Similarly,  Josephus  and  Galen  speak  of  /Elius  in  con- 
nection with  his  expedition,  but  do  not  call  him  prefect ;  while  Jose- 
phus does  denominate  Petronius  prefect  when  speaking  of  the  corn 
sent  to  Herod.  This  seems  to  show  that  Dio's  is  simply  a  careless 
expression,  as  was  remarked  above. 

The  known  facts  belonging  to  the  prefecture  of  Petronius  are 
these :  the  great  work  of  clearing  out  all  the  canals  of  Egypt,  more 
or  less  blocked  by  the  gradual  accumulation  of  sediment,  so  that 
when  this  was  accomplished  a  rise  of  three  feet  less  than  before  in 
the  Nile  would  still  produce  the  most  abundant  crops,  while  no  fam- 
ine ensued  as  before  if  the  minimum  limit  of  eight  cubits  was 
reached  ;3  repressing  a  riot  in  Alexandria  ;4  sending  abundance  of 
corn  to  Herod  in  the  time  of  the  famine ;  finally,  the  two  Ethiopian 
expeditions,  and  despatching  at  the  end  of  the  first  one  thousand 
prisoners  to  Augustus,  and  at  the  end  of  the  second,  the  envoys 
of  Candace  likewise  to  the  emperor,  then  in  Samos."  Now,  the  se- 
quence of  events  which  seems  to  me  to  harmonize  best  with  the  sev- 
eral accounts  of  his  prefecture  is  this :  in  the  first  place,  that  he  suc- 
ceeded Cornelius  in  26,  and  that  the  clearing  of  the  canals  occupied 
the  first  two  years  of  his  office.  This  accords  not  only  with  the  or- 
der of  events  followed  by  Strabo,  but  with  the  statement  of  Sueto- 
nius,6 that  this  great  "  triumph  of  man  over  nature,"  as  Strabo  terms 
it,  was  achieved  by  the  labors  of  the  soldiers  (militari  opere}.  Two 
years  seem  scarcely  too  short  for  the  work,  and  no  time  was  so  suit- 
able for  it  as  this  period,  when  he  had  the  full  force  of  three  legions 
to  employ  upon  it.  During  the  remainder  of  his  prefecture  this 

1  vi.  32  :  ^Elius  Gallus  ex  equestri  ordine. 

*  vi.  35  :  duce  P.  Petronio,  et  ipso  equestris  ordinis  praefecto  ^Egypti. 

3  Strabo,  788.  *  Ibid.  819.  s  Ibid.  820,  821.  6  Aug.  18. 


OF  CENTRAL   PARK,  NEW   YORK.  .* 

force  was  diminished  by  the  Arabian  expedition  and  employed  in  the 
Ethiopian  campaigns.  The  time  of  the  riot  is  impossible  to  fix,  but, 
according  to  the  order  of  events,  as  narrated  by  Strabo,  it  would  fall 
into  the  period  before  the  expedition  of  yElius.  Following  Dio '  and 
Josephus,  we  shall  fix  the  departure  of  ^ilius  and  his  force  from 
Alexandria  in  the  summer  of  24.  We  know  from  Pliny  (vi.  26)  that 
it  was  customary  for  voyagers  to  start  for  Arabia  and  India  about 
the  ist  of  August.  Reaching  Cleopatris  (Suez),  at  the  head  of  the  Red 
Sea,  about  this  time,  yElius  discovered  that  a  great  blunder  had  been 
committed.  The  eighty  ships  that  had  been  constructed  for  the  ex- 
pedition were  found  to  be  totally  unsuited  for  the  kind  of  voyage  to 
be  undertaken,  and  one  hundred  and  thirty  lighter  craft  had  to  be 
built  in  their  stead.  This  was  the  first  great  mistake  of  the  cam- 
paign, as  Strabo  says,8  and  I  am  convinced  from  his  language  that  it 
was  not  discovered  until  the  arrival  at  Cleopatris,  and  that  the  force 
had  to  remain  there  through  the  winter  while  the  other  ships  were 
building.3  It  may  well  have  been  during  this  stay  that  Herod 
sent  his  five  hundred  auxiliaries  to  join  the  expedition,  in  return 
for  the  assistance  he  received  from  Petronius  during  the  famine. 
The  fact  that  the  grain  sowed  in  the  first  year  of  famine  (B.C.  25) 
would  not  come  up  in  the  following  season  (as  Josephus  tells  us  it 
did  not)  would  be  ascertained  some  time  before  the  close  of  Herod's 
thirteenth  year  (4th  of  April,  24),  since  in  that  climate  the  barley  is 
ready  to  be  cut  about  the  ist  of  April ;  and  as  Herod  was  a  man  both 
bold  in  emergency  and  prompt  to  act,  his  preparations  to  send  to 
Egypt  for  corn  would  certainly  have  been  made  in  the  early  spring, 
not  "  after  the  summer  was  over  "  (post  aestateni],  as  Mommsen  says, 
thinking  o'f  Germany  rather  than  Palestine.  Moreover,  in  the  follow- 
ing year  (23,  Herod's  fifteenth)  his  affairs  were  in  so  prosperous  a 

1  In  fixing  the  time  consumed  upon  this  expedition,  every  one  is  compelled  to  desert 
the  lead  of  Dio,  who  seems  to  limit  its  continuance  to  a  single  year  (liii.  29).     His  state- 
ment cannot  stand  for  an  instant  by  the  side  of  Strabo's  circumstantial  account.     As  is 
usual  with  historians,  he  assigns  the  beginning  of  the  expedition  to  its  proper  year,  and 
finishes  the  account  of  the  whole  before  turning  to  another  subject,  without  properly  dis- 
tinguishing its  duration,  as  he  does  also  in  the  case  of  the  events  in  Ethiopia. 

2  780 :   Trpwroi/  fifv  £»}  roC3'  afidprrj^a  avvifir). 
'  Compare  Merivale,  Hist.  Rome,  iv.  121. 


44  THE  OBELISK-CRAB  INSCRIPTIONS 

condition  that  he  spent  vast  sums  in  repairing  the  temple  at  Jerusa- 
lem and  in  building  a  palace  for  himself,  one  apartment  of  which  he 
named  after  Augustus,  another  after  Agrippa.1 

Accordingly,  it  is  after  the  winter  of  24-23  that  >£lius  at  last  sets 
sail  from  Cleopatris  with  ten  thousand  Roman  troops  and  his  auxil- 
iaries, and,  after  a  tempestuous  voyage  of  fifteen  days,  arrives  at 
Leuce-Come,  in  Arabia,  where  he  was  compelled  to  pass  the  summer 
and  winter,8  in  consequence  of  the  maladies  which  had  attacked  his 
troops.  In  the  spring  of  22  he  started  out  for  the  interior  and  was 
led  by  circuitous  routes,  so  that  he  spent  six  months  upon  the  ad- 
vance,3 but  accomplished  his  return  to  the  coast  in  sixty  days.4 
Thence  he  passed  over  to  Myos  Hormos  in  eleven  days,  and  then 
travelled  across  country  to  the  Nile  at  Coptos.  This  distance  is 
stated  by  Pliny  (vi.  26)  as  two  hundred  and  fifty-seven  miles,  over  a 
mountainous  district,  which  was  traversed  in  twelve  days  by  the  mer- 
chants, and  probably  not  much  less  by  the  force  of  -^Elius,  in  their 
wretched  condition.  From  Coptos  to  Alexandria  it  is  three  hundred 
and  eight  miles,  according  to  Pliny,  and  required  about  twelve  days. 
Hence,  nine  full  months  must  have  been  occupied  by  y£lius  in  reach- 
ing Alexandria  after  starting  out  from  Leuce-Come  in  the  spring,  so 
that  it  must  have  been  very  near  the  end  of  the  year  22  when  he  re- 
turned. Consequently,  Mommsen's  statement,  that  he  consumed  a 
year  or  a  little  more  on  the  expedition,  is  lengthened  out  by  Strabo 
into  a  summer,  a  winter,  and  nine  months  besides,  from  the  time  they 
sailed  from  Cleopatris. 

Following  Dio  again,  we  shall  place  the  descent  of  the  Ethiopians 
upon  Syene  in  the  early  part  of  22,  which  brings  us  again  into  har- 
mony with  Strabo  and  the  crucial  fact,  which  Mommsen  ignores  in 
the  main,  and  renders  improbable  by  his  disposition  of  events,  that  it 
was  while  and  because  the  Roman  force  was  weakened  by  the  with- 
drawal of  the  troops  with  ^Elius,  that  the  Ethiopians  made  their  in- 
cursion. 

1  Joseph.  Bel.  Jud.  i.  21. 

2  Strabo,  781  :  TO  Sipog  »cai  rov  X£«'/iaiva. 

3  Strabo,  782 :  <£  £t  firjvwv  \povov  tv  rait;  occTf  icarirpi^E. 

4  Ibid.  :  rfiv  iraoav  olbv  t^KOffruloQ  i£f)Wfft  Kara  TTJV  ITTUVOCOV. 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  je 

The  route  probably  pursued  by  Petronius  through  Ethiopia  is 
well  described  by  Kenrick  ("  Ancient  Egyptians  ")  as  that  now  most 
commonly  followed  by  caravans  and  travellers.  Keeping  the  river  to 
Pselchis  (Dekki)  about  sixty  miles,  and  thence  to  Korusko,  fifty  miles 
more,  a  mountain  pass  opens  into  the  valley  of  the  Nile,  leading 
through  the  desert  by  a  route  of  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
to  Abou  Hammed  (Premnis),  where  it  rejoins  the  river  just  at  the 
beginning  of  the  great  bend  to  the  southwest.  The  first  sixty  miles  of 
this  route  is  through  a  valley  with  some  vegetation ;  then  follows  the 
desert  in  all  its  horrors  for  fifty  miles,  through  which  Petronius  passed 
on  his  way  to  Premnis,  "  making  his  way,"  as  Strabo  says,  "  through 
the  sands  where  the  army  of  Cambyses  was  overwhelmed." '  The 
remaining  distance  is  over  a  region  of  barren  rock. 

Before  withdrawing  from  Ethiopia  Petronius  fortified  Premnis,  vic- 
tualled it  for  two  years,  and  left  a  garrison  of  four  hundred  men.  Such 
an  expedition  would  necessarily  consume  the  greater  part  of  the  year 
22.  Upon  his  return  to  Alexandria  he  sold  some  of  his  prisoners,  sent 
one  thousand  to  Augustus,  and  diseases  carried  off  the  rest.  These 
events  may  reasonably  be  supposed  to  carry  us  into  the  next  year, 
as  indeed  Mommsen  acknowledges,  and  I  am  happy  to  find  one  point 
upon  which  I  can  agree  with  him  in  this  matter.  Hereupon,  news 
arrives  in  Alexandria  that  Candace  has  attacked  Premnis  with  many 
myriads.  Petronius  leads  his  forces  a  second  time  thither,  and  when 
he  has  strengthened  the  place  still  further,  the  Ethiopians  open 
negotiations  with  him ;  but  he  tells  them  they  must  treat  with  Caesar 
in  person.  Upon  their  declaring  that  they  did  not  know  who  Caesar 
was,  nor  where  they  must  go  to  find  him,  he  gave  them  guides  to 
conduct  them,  and  they  went  to  Samos,  where  Caesar  was  on  the  point 
of  setting  out  for  Syria  in  the  spring  of  20.'  They  were  kindly  re- 
ceived by  the  emperor,  "  obtained  all  that  they  asked,  and  even  the 
tribute  which  had  been  laid  upon  them  was  remitted." !  It  is  probable 

1  Strabo,  820 :  ci£\3oiv  roi'e  37vaf ,  t v  ole  6  Kafifivtrov  KaTixtiiaxt]  arparoq. 

2  This  incident  in  the  narrative  seems  to  show  that  the  envoys  did  not  reach  Alexandria 
in  21,  at  least  till  the  close  of  navigation,  which  fell  about  the  first  of  October  (Acts  xxvii. 
9;  Joseph.  Antiq.  Jud.  iii.  10  ;  Philo  ad  Caium,  3,  in  Place.  15).  and  for  some  four  months 
in  winter  all  vessels  Were  kept  in  harbor  (Hor.  C.  i.  4,  iii.  7). 

3  Strabo,  820,  821  :  T^V  C£  Uprjpvtv  rnxioaq  /3i\riov,  (ppovpdv  ip.fia\wv  Kal  rpoQtjv  cvtiv  iviavrwv 


4$  THE  OBELISK-CRAB    INSCRIPTIONS 

that  among  their  requests  was  the  withdrawal  of  the  Romans  from 
Premnis,  which  would  naturally  follow  from  their  being  released  from 
the  tribute,  Augustus  being  "  sensible  of  the  fruitlessness  of  attempt- 
ing to  extend  his  sway  into  their  wild  regions,"  as  Merivale  judiciously 
remarks.' 

Petronius  had  now  held  the  prefecture  for  a  long  term,  and  his 
recent  exploits  in  Ethiopia  had  made  him  too  conspicuous  a  person 
to  be  left  there  longer.  Augustus  had  had  sufficient  experience 
already  in  the  case  of  Cornelius  Gallus  to  render  him  especially 
sensitive  in  regard  to  Egypt ;  and  as  he  was  making  his  eastern  tour 
for  the  special  purpose  of  arranging  matters  for  some  time  to  come, 
we  may  suppose  that  Petronius  was  now  honorably  recalled  and  sent 
to  Rome.  If  we  follow  Pliny,  wTho  calls  him  P.  Petronius  instead  of 
C,  as  Dio  names  him,  we  shall  not  go  wrong  in  identifying  him  with 
P.  Petronius  Turpilianus,  who  was  one  of  the  masters  of  the  mint  in 
20-19,  and  struck  numerous  coins  bearing  his  name.  One  of  these 
on  the  reverse  bears  the  legend  AVGVSTVS  CAESAR,  and  represents 
a  person  standing  in  a  chariot  drawn  by  two  elephants,  and  holding 
a  laurel  branch  and  a  sceptre.  Some  similar  coins  were  issued  with 
the  names  also  of  his  colleagues  Durmius  and  Aquillius.2  In  these 
coins  the  elephants  have  usually  been  taken  as  an  allusion  to  India; 
but  they  may,  with  much  greater  reason,  be  referred  to  the  recent 
victories  in  Ethiopia.  It  should  be  observed  that  they  have  no 
legend  relating  to  Armenia  and  Parthia,  as  many  others  issued  by 
the  same  mint -masters,  and  they  agree  in  presenting  the  very  un- 
usual order  in  the  name  as  above,  Augustus  before  Caesar  instead  of 
after  it. 

The  appointment  of  y£lius  to  succeed  Petronius  may  well  be 
explained  by  a  desire  of  Augustus  to  throw  a  veil  over  his  ill-success 

TirpaKoaioiQ  dvfpdfftv,  aTrijptv  ttf  'A\t$dvcptiav '  KO.I  TU>V  a<'x/*aXa>rwv  rot'f  piv  {Xa^v/HMrwXifat,  \iXiovc 
?t  Kaiffapi  tirc^t  veaxrri  £/c  Kavra/3pwi>  t)Kovri,  roi'c  ct  voooi  £itxpi]ffai'TO.  iv  TOVT<P  fivpiam  Kavcawj 
TroXXaTff  iirl  rffv  Qpovpdv  .t7rrj\0£  "  TleTpwvioe  £'  i£(/3oi')Q>iae  nai  <p9dvti  vpootXBuv  tig  TO  Qpoi'ptov,  rat 
irXtioffi  irapaaKtvdi£  i^aff(j>a\iffdpfvof  rbv  TOITOV,  irpfaptvaafiiviav,  intXivafv  we  Kaiaapa  trpeoftekoOtU ' 
OVK  ticivai  Cf  ^atJKovriav  barif  (h)  KaTffap  icai  OTTT)  fiactffrtov  tit]  Trap'  aiToy,  tCwKt  rovf  TrapaTri^oiTaQ ' 
rat  fjKOv  tiff  £a/iov,  ivravQa  rov  Kaicrapoc  ovroff  Kal  fii\\ovro£  lie  Suoi'av  ttvivQtv  irpoiivai,  Ttfitpiov 
tiff  'Apfttviav  ortXAovrof.  Trdvrwv  ct  rv\6vT(av  <Lv  iciovro,  dtpiJKev  airo?c  <cai  rorf  <popov(;  ovf  tTri 

1  Hist.  Rome,  iv.  p.  127.  *  Cohen,  Descrip.  des  Monnaies. 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  47 

in  Arabia  by  his  promotion ;  and  in  the  "  Monumentum  Ancyranum," 
the  great  memorial  written  by  the  emperor  just  before  his  death,  de- 
tailing his  exploits,  he  places  side  by  side  as  distinguished  achieve- 
ments the  expeditions  into  Arabia  and  Ethiopia,  which  took  place 
"  at  about  the  same  time  "  (eodem  fere  tempore],  as  he  says,  thus  agree- 
ing with  Strabo  with  sufficient  exactness. 

In  relation  to  the  architect  Pontius,  Professor  Lumbroso,  in  his 
account  of  the  inscriptions,  gives  us  some  interesting  information. 
He  says :  "  The  mention  of  the  architect  Pontius  is  worthy  of  ob- 
servation, since  the  coincidence  of  time  leads  us  to  compare  the 
name  with  that  of  the  artist  who  designed  the  beautiful  fountain 
recently  discovered  on  the  site  of  the  Gardens  of  Maecenas,1  which 
shows  so  strongly  the  influence  of  Alexandrian  art." 

The  find  here  meant  is  a  marble  drinking-horn,  or  cornucopia,4 
about  four  feet  in  length,  with  the  upper  part  excavated  to  contain 
fruits  or  flowers,  it  is  supposed,  its  smaller  end  terminating  in  a 
bizarre  chimaera.  The  horn  is  supported  upon  a  plinth  out  of  which 
acanthus  leaves  are  springing,  as  if  to  form  a  bed  for  its  repose.  An 
orifice  is  cut  to  receive  a  pipe  from  below  and  conduct  the  water  so 
as  to  issue  in  a  jet  from  beneath  the  bended  knees  of  the  chimaera. 
Its  use  as  an  ornament  for  a  fountain  is  plain.  Upon  a  small  band 
in  front  is  engraved  the  inscription, 

IIO>7TIOS  A6HNAIO2  EI10IEI. 

Around  the  upper  portion  of  the  horn,  beneath  the  rim,  is  a  row  of 
three  Maenads  in  various  attitudes  of  Bacchic  frenzy,  together  with  a 
Bacchic  crater,  or  mixing-bowl.  The  execution  of  the  figures  is  ex- 
quisite, in  gesture,  pose,  and  drapery ;  but  they  are  proved  by  com- 
parison with  other  remains  of  antiquity  to  be  copies  of  celebrated 
pieces  and  not  original  designs.  This  fact,  together  with  the  form  of 
the  A  in  the  inscription  (which  is  exactly  like  that  in  BAPBAPO2,  both 
at  Alexandria  and  Philae),  the  use  of  the  imperfect  EHOIEI,  instead  of 

1  Bull.  d.  Comm.  Arch.  Munic.  1875,  p.  118. 

5  The  cornucopia  was  selected  by  Ptolemy  Philadelphus,  according  to  Athenaeus  (497), 
as  the  special  symbol  of  Arsinoe,  and  it  appears  frequently  upon  Ptolemaic  coins,  as  occa- 
sionally on  those  of  Augustus.  It  was  a  favorite  symbol  with  Horace  (C.  i.  17,  16 ;  C.  S. 
60;  Epl.  i.  12,29.) 


,g  THE  OBELISK-CRAB  INSCRIPTIONS 

the  aorist  EIIOIH2E,  and  the  site  upon  which  it  was  found,  has  led 
the  archaeologists  of  Rome  to  the  conclusion  that  the  monument 
belongs  certainly  to  the  time  of  Maecenas. 

Hence,  from  the  evidence  now  before  us,  we  may  outline  the  ca- 
reer of  Pontius  \vith  some  confidence  in  this  way.  Of  Athenian  birth, 
he  passed  over  to  Alexandria  to  study  and  pursue  his  chosen  profession 
in  that  more  enterprising  capital.  Proving  himself  a  man  of  note  as 
an  architect,  Barbarus,with  his  help,  conceived  the  idea  of  transporting 
two  of  the  obelisks  of  Heliopolis  to  Alexandria,  and  erecting  them 
there  before  the  temple.  The  fame  of  his  success  in  achieving  this 
difficult  task  in  13-12  (the  first  of  the  kind  under  the  Romans),  was 
carried  to  Rome,  and  the  emperor  was  induced  to  attempt  the  still 
more  difficult  feat  of  transporting  two  more  obelisks  to  the  Capitol. 
The  feeling  with  which  this  achievement  was  regarded  is  expressed 
by  Pliny  (xxxvi.  14).  After  mentioning  the  two  obelisks  as  standing 
before  the  temple  in  Alexandria,  he  proceeds  to  say  that  "  the  diffi- 
culty of  conveying  these  monoliths  to  Rome  by  sea  surpassed  every- 
thing, and  the  vessels  used  were  marvellous  spectacles,  so  that  Augus- 
tus consecrated  the  first  one  at  Puteoli."  We  can  now  see  rightly,  for 
the  first  time, the  connection  in  the  mind  of  Pliny  between  the  obelisks 
at  Alexandria  and  those  of  Augustus  at  Rome ;  for  the  inscriptions 
that  have  been  discovered  on  the  bases  of  the  last  prove  that  they 
were  erected  in  B.C.  10-9,  three  years  after  those  at  Alexandria.1  That 
Pontius  was  engaged  upon  this  task  we  have  no  express  information ; 
but  it  is  natural  to  suppose  that  the  architect  who  had  been  so  suc- 
cessful in  the  first  attempt  would  be  the  person  selected  for  the  sec- 
ond so  soon  after ;  and  when  we  find  the  name  again  upon  the  foun- 
tain in  the  Gardens  of  Maecenas,  we  may  continue  the  sketch  of  his 
career  by  supposing  that  he  was  the  person  chosen  for  the  task,  and, 

1  Orelli,  36;  C  I.  L.  vi.  701  : 

IMP.CAESAR.DIVI.F. 

AVGVSTVS 

PONTIFEX  MAXIMVS 

IMP.XII.COS.XI.TRIB.POT.XIV. 

AEGVPTO.IN.POTESTATEM 

POPVLI.ROMANI.REDACTA 

SOLI.DONVM.DEDIT. 


OF  CENTRAL  PARK,  NEW  YORK.  49 

after  he  had  finished  these  gigantic  labors,  he  turned  his  hand  to  the 
beautiful  trifle  now  discovered  in  the  gardens  of  the  great  prime- 
minister  of  Augustus,  out  of  gratitude  to  whose  munificent  patronage 
of  artists  and  poets  he  might  well  have  been  glad  to  execute  such  a 
commission.  But  he  rewarded  himself  by  inscribing  his  name  even 
here,  as  upon  the  base  of  the  obelisk  at  Alexandria.  We  may  fondly 
think  that  Maecenas,  who  died  B.C.  8,  was  the  good  friend  of  Pontius, 
as  well  as  of  Horace,  and  that  the  poet  and  the  statesman  may  many 
a  time,  in  the  last  year  of  their  lives,  have  gazed  admiringly  upon  the 
handiwork  of  their  friend,  the  architect  Pontius. 

Respectfully  yours, 

AUGUSTUS  C.  MERRIAM. 


LIDDELL  &  SCOTT'S  GREEK-ENGLISH  LEXICON. 


A  GREEK-ENGLISH  LEXICON.  Compiled  by  HENRY  GEORGE  LIDDELL,  D.D., 
Dean  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  and  ROBERT  SCOTT,  D.D.,  Dean  of  Rochester, 
late  Master  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford.  Seventh  Edition,  Revised  and  Augmented 
throughout,  with  the  Co-operation  of  Professor  DRISLER,  of  Columbia  College, 
New  York.  410,  Sheep,  $10  oo. 


It  is  truly  a  magnificent  work,  both  in  its  exterior 
form  and  in  its  contents.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
say  wherein  it  falls  short  of  the  ideal  of  a  Greek- 
English  lexicon. — Professor  W.  S.  TYLER,  Amherst 
College. 

A  work  which  has  stood  the  test  of  forty  years' 
constant  use  at  the  hands  of  the  best  scholars  here 
and  in  England  needs  little  characterization  of  its 
many  and  acknowledged  excellences.  It  is  suffi- 
cient to  say  that  it  is  without  doubt  the  best  Greek- 
English  lexicon  in  our  language,  and  that  it  is  fully 
abreast  of  the  best  scholarship  of  the  two  countries. 
— Christian  Union,  N.  Y. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  name  any  dictionary 
which  has  done  more  for  any  branch  of  literature 
or  science  than  that  which  is  the  subject  of  this 
article.  Partly  by  their  own  labors,  and  partly  by 
availing  themselves  of  those  of  others,  Dean  Liddell 
and  Dean  Scott  have  brought  their  lexicon  to  a 
degree  of  excellence  which  has  the  appearance  of 
finality,  if  finality  is  possible  of  attainment  in  lexi- 
cography.— London  Times. 

A  Greek-English  lexicon  as  nearly  perfect  as 
can  well  be  hoped  for  in  many  a  year  to  come. 
No  Greek  scholar  in  either  England  or  America 
can  afford  to  be  without  it. — President  R.D.  HITCH- 
COCK, in  the  Evangelist,  N.  Y. 

It  is  now  the  best  product  of  its  kind  ;  the  rep- 
resentative work  of  an  age  which  represents  the 
highest  point  of  Greek  scholarship  ever  reached  in 
England.  Nearly  every  page  shows  signs  of  addi- 
tion, improvement,  and  skilful  compression,  and 
that  to  an  extent  that  would  hardly  have  been  sup- 
posed practicable,  did  not  the  fact  abundantly  ap- 
pear on  comparison  with  the  former  editions. — 
Sunday-School  Times,  Philadelphia. 

A  noble  monument  of  critical  scholarship  and 
patient  industry  ;  and  will  still  further  facilitate  the 
acquisition  of  the  noble  tongue  whose  usages  it 
illustrates. — Literary  World,  Boston. 

This  work,  as  it  stands,  is  a  monument  of  modern 
classical  scholarship,  and  it  is  hard  to  conceive  of 
a  dictionary  more  complete,  exact,  and  full  in  its 
references. — Christian  at  Work,  N.  Y. 


It  is  a  monument  of  patient  scholarship,  and  is 
a  blessing  to  every  classical  student. — Journal  of 
Education,  Boston. 

So  nearly  perfect  that  one  can  hardly  see  what 
chances  there  are  for  improvement  in  any  future 
edition. — Boston  Transcript. 

It  seems  to  furnish  in  its  present  form  all  that  is 
necessary  in  a  critical  and  accurate  lexicon  of  the 
Greek  language. — Dr.  HENRY  A.  COIT,  St.  Paul's 
School,  Concord,  N.  H. 

It  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  this  lexicon  is  not 
only  an  improvement  on  the  last  issue  so  great  as 
to  make  an  epoch,  but  also  the  best  that  we  shall 
have  for  many  years  to  come. —  The  Critic,  N.  Y. 

This  great  dictionary  embodies  the  best  Greek 
scholarship  of  the  era,  and  becomes  the  final  appeal 
in  the  interpretation  of  the  New  Testament,  as  well 
as  the  classic  Greek.  Students  of  the  sacred  Script- 
ures will  appreciate  the  broad  and  accurate  schol- 
arship, and  the  long,  persistent  studies  of  the  authors 
of  this  great  work ;  and  every  advanced  student 
will  look  upon  the  possession  of  this  invaluable 
Greek  thesaurus  as  indispensable  to  his  critical  ap- 
paratus.— Zioi's  Herald,  Boston. 

A  Greek-English  lexicon  in  respect  to  its  matter 
and  standing  unrivalled  and  alone  in  England  and 
the  United  States. — N,  Y.  Times. 

The  work  now  embodies  all  the  results  of  mod- 
ern Greek  scholarship  with  whatever  has  come 
from  the  study  of  comparative  philology.  It  is  a 
monument  of  patient  labor  and  broad  and  accurate 
learning,  and  its  typographical  arrangement  is  such 
as  to  be  specially  helpful  to  the  student. — Boston 
Journal. 

The  recognition  of  American  scholarship  in  its 
preparation  will  be  appreciated  in  this  country. 
The  republic  of  letters  knows  of  no  political  divi- 
sions.—  Watchman,  Boston. 

That  portion  of  the  book  connected  with  com- 
parative philology  has  been  entirely  recast,  in 
harmony  with  the  strides  that  have  been  made  in 
that  science  since  the  first  editions  of  the  lexi- 
con appeared.  —  Saturday  Evening  Gazette,  Bos- 
ton. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  will  send  the  above  work  by  mail,  postage  prepaid,  to  any  fart  of  the  United 

States,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 


• 


SOME  USEFUL  BOOKS  OF  REFERENCE, 


Haydn's  Dictionary  of  Dates, 

Haydn's  Dictionary  of  Dates  and  Universal  Information  relating  to  all  Ages 
and  Nations.  Seventeenth  Edition,  containing  the  History  of  the  World  to 
the  Autumn  of  1881.  By  BENJAMIN  VINCENT.  Revised  for  American  Readers. 
Large  8vo,  810  pages,  Cloth,  £5  oo. 

Skeat's  Etymological  Dictionary, 

A  Concise  Etymological  Dictionary  of  the  English  Language.  By  the  Rev.  WAL- 
TER W.  SKEAT,  M.A.  i2mo,  Cloth,  Uniform  with  "The  Student's  Series,"  $i  25. 

Crabb's  English  Synonymes, 

English  Synonymes  Explained  in  Alphabetical  Order.  With  copious  Ilh  a- 
tions  and  Examples  drawn  from  the  Best  Writers.  To  which  is  now  a  ded 
an  Index  to  the  Words.  By  GEORGE  CRABB,  A.M.  New  Edition,  with  Addi- 
tions and  Corrections.  12010,856  pages,  Cloth,  $2  50. 

Reber's  Ancient  Art, 

History  of  Ancient  Art.  By  Dr.  FRANZ  VON  REBER.  Revised  by  the  Author. 
Translated  and  Augmented  by  JOSEPH  THACHER  CLARKE.  With  310  Illustra- 
tions and  a  Glossary  of  Technical  Terms.  8vo,  Cloth,  $3  50. 

Schliemann's  Ilios, 

Ilios,  the  City  and  Country  of  the  Trojans.  The  Results  of  Researches  and 
Discoveries  on  the  Site  of  Troy  and  throughout  the  Troad  in  the  years  1871- 
'72~'73>  78>  '79;  including  an  Autobiography  of  the  Author.  By  Dr.  HENRY 
SCHLIEMANN,  F.S.A.  \Vith  a  Preface,  Appendices,  and  Notes.  With  Maps, 
Plans,  and  about  1800  Illustrations.  Imperial  8vo,  Cloth,  $12  oo. 

Cesnola's  Cyprus, 

Cyprus :  its  Ancient  Cities,  Tombs,  and  Temples.  A  Narrative  of  Researches 
and  Excavations  during  Ten  Years'  Residence  in  that  Island.  By  General 
Louis  PALMA  DI  CESNOLA.  With  Portrait,  Maps,  and  400  Illustrations.  8vo, 
Cloth,  Extra,  Gilt  Tops  and  Uncut  Edges,  $7  50. 

Malmify's  Greek  Literature, 

A  History  of  Classical  Greek  Literature.  By  J.  P.  MAHAFFY.  In  Two  Vol- 
umes. 12010,  Cloth,  $4  oo. 

Simcox's  Latin  Literature, 

A  History  of  Latin  Literature,  from  Ennius  to  Boethius.  By  GEORGE  AUGUSTUS 
SIMCOX,  M.A.  In  Two  Volumes.  i2mo,  Cloth,  $4  oo. 

Syraonds's  Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets, 

Studies  of  the  Greek  Poets.  By  JOHN  ADDINGTON  SYMONDS.  Revised  and  En- 
larged by  the  Author.  In  Two  Volumes.  Square  i6mo,  Cloth,  $3  50. 

Miiller's  Political  History  of  Recent  Times, 

Political  History  of  Recent  Times  (1816-1875).  With  Special  Reference  to 
Germany.  By  WILHELM  MULLER,  Professor  in  Tubingen.  Revised  and  En- 
larged by  the  Author.  Translated,  with  an  Appendix  covering  the  Period  from 
1876  to  1881,  by  the  Rev.  JOHN  P.  PETERS,  Ph.D.  izmo,  Cloth,  $3  oo. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  cS:   BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 

.'•d'3?iJtfs,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 

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